


Not Afraid to Fall

by Aerstes



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Domestic Dansen, F/F, Fluff, HEALTHY! COMMUNICATION!!!, Happy Ending, Humor, No Angst, Pining, Rom-com, Strangers to Lovers, SuperCorp, Supercorp endgame, aka a weirdly specific au based on a true story, bed sharing???, but clearly idk when to stfu, fake dating...sort of, feat. an unexpected brotp between Lena and Lucy, fluff with some smut, haitus break fic, just a lil tho, mentions of rojascorp but they're exes, snuggly bonfires, the s1 wholesome james vibes we deserve, the strangers photoshoot au, this was supposed to be a gd oneshot, those lit superfriends vibes, two girls chillin in the woods feeling each other up cuz they're super gay, which is weird cuz that's usually my forte
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:22:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 30,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27900715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aerstes/pseuds/Aerstes
Summary: Trying to get his photography career off the ground, James comes up with an idea to do a couples photo shoot...with two complete strangers (this is apparently a recent trend. go google it if you're curious. I couldn't believe it until a 'friend' of mine got dragged into one, hence the inspiration for this story)He already has one person in mind, his reclusive friend Lena, who seems adamant to stay single forever after a messy split with her ex. And after a lot of convincing from her sister, Kara agrees to participate in the shoot as well. Neither Lena nor Kara expect anything to come of it. It's just a photo shoot, after all. But perhaps James is just as good a matchmaker as he is a photographer...
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 165
Kudos: 1023
Collections: Gays in Earth 38





	1. Chapter 1

“Alright. Explain this insane idea of yours to me again. Slowly. So I don’t miss a single ridiculous detail.” 

Lena poured herself a cup of coffee from the french press on her kitchen countertop. It was far too early for this. 

“I want to do a photoshoot,” James replied, perched on the barstool opposite the counter from her. 

“Uh huh,” Lena replied dryly.

“With you as the subject.”

“Right.”

Being photographed by James didn’t bother her. It came with the territory of having a photographer as a close friend. You would think it  _ would _ bother her, seeing as she was the heiress to one of the largest tech companies in the U.S, who typically hated having her picture taken or getting any attention at all. But Lena had been  _ so _ good at avoiding attention over the years, that she was practically unrecognizable to the general public. So as long as James gave her an alias and was discreet about where and how he released any pictures he took, no one seemed to make the connection between Lena and her family’s empire.

“And another girl,” James continued to explain.

“Sure,” Lena said with a shrug. 

“Posing as a couple.” 

“See? Nope. You lost me again.” 

“God, you’re stubborn,” James sighed, reaching over to help himself to one of the bagels Lena had bought for herself before he dropped in unannounced. She slapped his hand away before he could. “Hey!” he complained.

“Yes I know I'm stubborn,” Lena replied dryly. “I also know that you are a professional wedding photographer. So it’s not like you have a shortage of couples to choose from for a shoot. So why are you asking me, the one single person that you know, to do this?” 

“First of all, I am not a wedding photographer. I am a photographer...who does a lot of weddings,” he clarified with some vexation in his tone. “Second, I really need to add better content to my portfolio. I need a chance to finally get recognized for my work! Especially since I heard CatCo’s current head of the photography department is looking to retire.” 

“Well why didn’t you say this was about a job?” Lena asked. “I can just call Cat myself and put in a good word for you. I can even throw in an exclusive interview to sweeten the pot.”

“Because that’s not how I want to prove myself. Letting my rich, well connected friend pull some strings for me? Not a good look.” 

“It’s what everyone else does,” Lena replied with a passive sigh as she began to scroll through her emails, making sure she hadn’t missed anything important when she dared to sleep in to the late, late hour of 7 AM this Saturday morning. 

Despite not looking directly at James, however, she could sense that he was rolling his eyes at her. 

“You just don’t wanna do it,” he said.

“Of course I don’t. You want me to pretend to be dating a girl I don’t even know.” 

“I don’t want you to pretend to do anything!" James insisted. "I want you and this other girl to pose in traditional couple poses while acknowledging that you have no idea who each other is. It’s visual storytelling. Like I’m orchestrating a meet-cute and documenting the whole thing. A meet-shoot, if you will.”

Lena shook her head, first at James’s terrible pun and then by how casually he was talking about this. Sure, he’d come up with some wild concepts for photo shoots before. But this was just...too much. 

“Something tells me you have an ulterior motive here.” 

James smiled smugly at Lena.

“I have no idea what you mean," he said, and snatched a bagel before she could stop him.

“Oh really?" she replied, glaring at him as he crudely stuffed his mouth with carbs. "It’s just a coincidence that you’ve been trying to set me up on dates ever since Andrea and I split, and when that didn’t work, you suddenly have this idea to have me pose in a bunch of steamy pictures with a girl I don’t know?” 

“I did not use the word  _ steamy _ ," he clarified.

“Missing the point, James.” 

“Come on, Lena,” he said with amused exasperation in his tone. “Listen, I heard you when you said you didn’t want me to try and set you up on dates anymore.”

“Did you, though?” 

James laughed, dipping his head low towards the countertop as he gathered himself before using his next tactic to try and convince his friend to go along with his ridiculous plan.

“I get it, okay?” he said. “The breakup still hurts.”

“Fuck’s sake,” Lena spat, walking away from the kitchen table and into the living room, not wanting to talk about this right now. 

“And I know you’re afraid girls would only want to date you once they heard your name because of the money,” James pressed, following close behind, refusing to let her shut down on him. “But that’s the beauty of this shoot. It would be completely anonymous. You don’t even have to tell each other your names if you don’t want to.” 

Lena sighed, perching in her favorite armchair with her feet tucked under her legs.

“James, I appreciate the thought you’ve put into this, annoying as it is. But if I wanted to start dating again, I would.” 

“I’m not asking you to date anyone. I’m just asking you to do me a solid by posing for a few pictures with a cute girl. And if you end up getting her number? Then so be it.” 

Lena chose to start ignoring James entirely by picking up the book she had started reading before he dropped by unannounced, looking at it but not really reading it, distracted by her friend’s persisting presence.

“Listen, Lena,” James said, sitting on the couch next to her chair. “You know me. I’m not going to make you do anything that you’re uncomfortable with. Just please do me this favor? You have no idea how much it would mean to me.”

Lena looked up from her book long enough to narrow her eyes at James. 

“Look,” he said desperately. “If I have to take one more picture of a log wrapped in burlap and lace with some moss on it that's supposed to be considered a “centerpiece”, I’m going to lose my mind. I need a challenge. I need to make something that feels like art. And you and that beautiful, camera perfect face of yours are the perfect chance to do just that. Please?” 

Lena rolled her eyes, mulling over James’s plea for a moment until she finally set her book down and leaned back resignedly in her chair. 

“You know you’re very manipulative when you want to be.” 

“Is that a yes?” James said with renewed excitement. 

“Ugh, fine,” Lena groaned. 

“Hell yes! You won’t regret it. I’m going to find you the  _ perfect _ girl.” 

“The perfect girl to take a few pictures with, right?” 

“Yeah...that too,” he said with a big grin.

*

That evening, Lena found herself staring at the newest post on James’s photography page on Instagram, just below the logo of Olsen Photography, with the ‘O’ photoshopped as a camera lens. The logo was an annoying combination of tacky and creative, which, she supposed, was perfect for him. Before reading the post in question, Lena noticed the post directly underneath, which featured some pictures of what had to be the most miserable newlyweds Lena had ever seen. She remembered James bitching about a wedding from hell he had shot the weekend before. He neglected to mention, however, the absolutely garish red and black color scheme the couple had chosen. Lena cringed at the photos, wondering how in god’s name no one had saved the young couple from themselves and their tastes. But she wouldn’t focus on that now. The post she needed to read was posted beneath a stock picture with the text “Tester Needed!” offset by a floral background, and read as follows:

_ Attention Ladies! _

_ I need a tester for a very specific shoot that I am planning. Please read the qualifications carefully before considering your participation. _

_ I want to do a stranger's shoot involving two willing participants. I have one woman lined up, I just need to find someone who is a complete stranger to her (and hopefully a good match). The two of you will be photographed together as if you were a couple. Some photos will be typical smiling and posing photos, and some will be...pretty up close and personal. I cannot stress enough that you should be meeting for the first time at this shoot. Here are the qualifications for the girl I’m looking for: _

  * _Woman 20-30 years old_


  * Must be single! Some of these photos will be intimate in theme so already being in a relationship wouldn’t be advisable


  * Must be comfortable in front of a camera and be open to a few costume changes of my own design


  * Must be okay with photos being published online or in print



_ If this sounds like something you want to do, please send me a message with a little info about yourself, along with a recent picture. I am very excited about this project and I’m sure the mystery woman you’ll be photographed with cannot wait to meet you! _

  
  


Lena rolled her eyes. James couldn’t have been any more blatant if he tried. He might as well have posted “trying to get my friend laid, pm if interested”. At least that’s what Lena thought it looked like.

James had put up the notice almost immediately after Lena had agreed, meaning that he had fully planned this scheme well before he had approached her about it. Which was irksome. And since then, the post had gotten 500 likes and nearly 150 comments. Which was amazingly intimidating. All this attention just for a girl to take a couple pictures with her? Would there have been less or more attention if these women knew who they were signing up to do the shoot with? 

Definitely less, Lena thought bitterly. 

She knew that she was being unnecessarily harsh on herself, but she couldn’t help it. Lena could vaguely remember a time when she had far less hesitations about dating. She could stride into a bar, find someone that caught her attention, and strike up a conversation, delighted in the way girls seemed to stutter and blush in response to the unbroken attention of a young, beautiful heiress. That was, until she was the one stuttering and blushing when Andrea had dropped into her life. Their time together seemed like a dream now, a fantasy formed with broad brush strokes of watercolors that bled together into an abstraction, to be looked at like a piece in a museum that she could only guess at the meaning of. 

The picture that came after it was far more clear to Lena; too jarring to forget. She repeated that night in her mind over and over again. It was during the expansion of LuthorCorp to it’s sister branch LCorp, a huge development project and move from Metropolis to National City, and Lena was travelling back and forth almost constantly. She walked into their apartment, hoping to surprise her fiance by coming home from her latest trip a week early, only to find the apartment dark except for the small reading lamp next to the couch. She remembered how it’s dull light cast unnatural shadows over the clothes on the living room floor that she didn’t recognize and the two half drunk glasses of wine on the coffee table. She remembered the sound of laughing and murmuring upstairs, muffled like Lena was hearing it from underwater. And she remembered the look on Andrea’s face when she tried to cover herself and her lover up, insisting that she could explain...

Maybe Andrea had a point when she listed all the reasons that somehow justified her infidelity. Maybe Lena  _ was _ too distant, maybe she  _ did _ travel for work too much, and  _ maybe _ she didn’t know how to let anyone in. Whatever that meant. But those were reasons you broke up with someone, not reasons you stayed engaged to someone while fucking around behind her back.

The more Lena indulged in her little bout of self pity, the more she regretted agreeing to this whole setup James had talked her into. She didn’t want to be shoved, however lovingly, in the direction of someone new. No matter how lonely she got these days, she refused to open herself up to heartbreak again. 

Lena bit her lower lip, looking at the number of comments on James’s post. She really shouldn’t look. Especially since it was so important to James that she not know anything about the girl he was going to pair her up with for the photos. But the curiosity was killing her. What kind of girl would be interested in such a bizarre setup, anyway? 

Lena opened the comments. It’s not like she had anything more interesting to do with her Saturday night, anyhow. As she skimmed through them, she noticed that most of the comments were just people tagging women they knew and telling them to sign up. Apparently pushy friends were a universal problem. There were a few women who showed interest independent of the nudging of others, but based on their profile pictures, they all seemed about as young and naive as Lena would have expected. And Lena didn’t have the time or the patience for young and naive. 

Not that she was considering if any of these women would make a good girlfriend. She meant it when she said she wasn’t looking to be set up. 

There was one exchange that caught her attention and made her even chuckle a bit. A girl named Alex seemed to be arguing with someone named K. Danvers. She appreciated the privacy both women seemed to value based on the names they gave their profiles.

Alex (REDACTED): KARA. DO IT. 

K. Danvers: What??? No!  


Alex (REDACTED): DO IT DO IT DO IT

K. Danvers: ALEX STOP 


Alex (REDACTED): PLEASE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

K. Danvers: OMG LEAVE ME ALONE 


Lena chuckled as she read the exchange. She could definitely sympathize with how annoying it was to be pushed into things by well meaning friends. Her eyes lingered on the exchange a moment longer, something about the name Danvers sparking memory, but she couldn’t quite place from where. 

Lena put her phone away screen side down after that. She didn’t want to think about the photo shoot any more than she had to. It just made her palms sweat and her heart thump noticeably in her chest.  _ Why _ had she agreed to this again? 

*

Kara ignored the buzzing of her cell phone next to her on the end table as she continued her classic disney film binge. She already knew who was calling, and she didn't want to hear it. 

But the buzzing was pretty annoying. So. 

"What? _ " _ she snapped when she answered the phone.

_ "Did you message James yet?" _

"Alex. Seriously. Stop,” Kara replied firmly.

_ "Oh come on!"  _ Alex whined.  _ "It's just a photo shoot! What are you afraid of?" _

"I'm not afraid of anything!" Kara retorted. "I just…don't see why you think it's so important I do this."

_ "Kara. Don't even pretend you weren’t just lamenting to me the other day about how your dating life is ‘dead’ because you never meet anyone new. You don’t think it’s luck, or even fate, that right after your little meltdown, James makes a post asking for a single girl to do a couples shoot with a hot stranger?" _

“See. That’s exactly my point. Don’t you think that’s...sort of weird?” 

_ “So what if it’s weird?  _ You’re _ weird!” _

“Hey!” Kara exclaimed. 

Alex chuckled at her little jab and then paused. 

_ “You just don’t want to see James because you’re embarrassed about what happened at my wedding.” _

“I am  _ not _ ,” Kara retorted quickly, feeling heat creeping onto her neck regardless.

_ “Kara. You got drunk and hit on my brother in law. In front of his girlfriend Lucy.”  _

Kara groaned, hiding her face in her hands for a moment until the embarrassing memory passed.

“I forgot he was Kelly’s brother. And that he wasn’t single. Okay?”

_ “Does that explain why you then started hitting on Lucy like five minutes later?” _

“You forget how drunk I was! I called your aunt “Karen” all night even though that is not her name!” 

_ “Well, to be fair, she was being kind of a Karen. And anyhow, it’s no big deal. I explained to them that my bisexual disaster little sister is not in control of who she flirts with after enough vodka cranberries.” _

“Alex! Come on-” Kara began to protest, annoyed at the suggestion that Kara had  _ ever _ been a flirt. 

Really, that night was just a fluke. She’d been admittedly feeling more annoyed with her single status after the girl she was hoping would be her date to the wedding had left her on read unexpectedly a week prior. And yeah, maybe the sight of her sister and her new wife so happy and in love that day made her feel a tad bit lonely. And it didn’t help that the bartender had  _ definitely _ overpoured her drinks...

_ “And James assured me that you would be a perfect subject for the photo shoot,” _ Alex continued.  _ “Exactly what he’s looking for. Meaning that whoever this girl is, you are probably her type.” _

"I definitely think you are reading too much into this. It's just a photo shoot!"

_ "Pfft! Okay. His description literally said ‘must be single. Some photos will be intimate’. What the hell do you think it is? Even if you don't, ya know, wanna fuck this girl or whatever-” _

“Alex!” Kara interrupted. “Jesus!” 

_ “Bottom line, you need to go meet someone,” _ Alex pressed.  _ “And if nothing else, you know how talented James is. You'll at least look good in the photos." _

"Do you know how desperate I would seem if I jumped on this?"

_ "...You are desperate, though." _

“Goodbye, Alex,” Kara said in a huff, and hung up, trying not to crack her phone screen as she set it down angrily on the table next to her.

Kara was  _ not _ desperate. Sure, she’d been in a bit of a dry spell lately. Which occasionally caused lapses in judgement, such as flirting with her sister-in-law’s very charming but very unavailable brother. And his girlfriend…

But things weren’t so bad that she was going to volunteer for something as ridiculous as a couples shoot with a stranger. She could only wonder at the kind of woman James had already recruited for the project. 

She was probably beautiful, if James was so adamant about photographing her. And likely much more outgoing that Kara was to be up for such a thing. The last time Kara had been photographed professionally, outside of the group photos at Alex’s wedding, was for her high school graduation pictures. And if she remembered correctly, she was self conscious and uncomfortable the entire time. It must be nice to feel as comfortable being the focus of attention as the woman likely was. Someone like that probably dressed well, had perfect hair and makeup. Probably even smelled nice…

_ Dammit _ , Kara thought bitterly as she opened up her laptop, looking over the post on James’s Instagram. Maybe Alex was right. It was just a photo shoot, after all. How bad could it be? 

“Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it-” she told herself as she picked up her phone and clicked on James’s phone number Alex had already sent to her. “Crap,” she muttered as it rang. 

_ “Hello?”  _ James answered just as Kara was about to change her mind and hang up. 

“James! Hi! Uh…” Kara said, getting up from her couch and walking around, like she usually did as a nervous habit when she was on the phone with anyone other than Alex. “It’s Kara. Kara Danvers. I’m, um…”

_ “Alex’s sister, right?” _ James filled in. “ _ Yeah. I remember you. Vividly, as a matter of fact.”  _

“Okay, listen,” Kara said, about to get defensive, until she heard James laughing lightheartedly on the other end of the phone. 

_ “Kara, Kara, it’s fine,”  _ he insisted.  _ “I’m just teasing. It was a wild wedding. You should see the photos that didn’t make the cut into the photo album.” _

“Please tell me I’m not in any of them…” Kara lamented. 

_ “Only a couple. I promise. None of which involved you puking in the bushes outside the reception venue, by the way.” _

“The bartender was a heavy pourer!” Kara insisted, mortified. She’d almost managed to forget that part... 

She could hear James laughing again on the other end of the phone. She thought that must have been why she had taken a liking to him at the wedding. He had a very charming laugh, even when he was laughing at her own expense.

_ “Anyway,”  _ he said after a moment.  _ “What can I do for you?”  _

“Well, um...I saw your post about an upcoming photo shoot you’re doing. Well, I didn’t see it. Alex saw it. And she seemed rather adamant about making sure that I saw it. And, uh…”

_ “You mean the stranger’s shoot? Yeah, Alex all but filled out an application for you. In extensive detail, I might add.”  _

“God,” Kara groaned. “Why am I not surprised?” 

_ “She’s just excited. And for what it’s worth, I was actually hoping you’d call. I think you’d be a great fit for the other girl.” _

“Really? You do?” Kara asked, cheeks suddenly flushing.

_ “Yeah. Your features contrast hers really well.”  _

“Oh. Oh! My features,” Kara said with a nervous laugh. “Right. For the photos. Gotcha.” Kara adjusted her glasses anxiously, wishing she was not on this phone call anymore. “Anyway, look. I just wanted to call because Alex wanted me to. So. Ya know. I’m sure you have plenty of other people interested in the shoot, so go ahead and feel free to pick someone else. I’m not great at being photographed anyway.” 

_ “I’m sure you are,” _ James said in a tone soothing enough to keep Kara from hanging up on him abruptly.  _ “Like I said, Kara, I think you’d be perfect for the shoot. I really do. So, how about I send you some of the details, and you take a day or two to think it over before you turn me down, okay?”  _

Kara let out a shuddering sigh. 

“Okay. Sure,” she said against her better judgement.

*

“Miss Luthor?” Lena’s assistant called in to her office. 

“Hmm?” 

“Visitor for you.” 

“Oh,” Lena replied, surprised. No one ever visited her at the office. “Send them in.” 

A moment later, James popped his head in the door. 

“Nope! Out!” Lena demanded, not needing this particular distraction. 

“I’ll be quick, I promise,” James said, ignoring her commands.

Lena glared at him, but didn’t try to stop him from letting himself into her office. 

“I think I found the perfect girl for the shoot,” he said excitedly, sitting himself down in the chair across her desk and putting his camera bag down on top of a pile of her paperwork. 

“I am on the edge of my seat in anticipation, James,” Lena said in a monotone voice, continuing to try and focus on the spreadsheet on her computer. 

“Oh, come on,” he replied. “I think you’ll really like her.”

“I thought this was all about getting you a job? Why would my liking or not liking this girl affect that?” 

“Because you two need to have at least  _ some _ chemistry or the whole concept is a bust.”

“I see. Well, go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back, if that’s what you’re looking for.” 

James narrowed his eyes at Lena. 

“You don’t want to hear about her?” 

“Nope,” Lena lied, still staring at her computer screen. “Ruins the premise of complete anonymity, don’t you think? Or did you gush to her all about me already?” 

“Only a little bit,” James said with a beaming smile. “But overall you are still a complete mystery, as promised.” 

“Phenomenal,” she replied dryly. “Anything else?” 

James leaned back in his chair, folding his arms in front of him. 

“She’s very cute.” 

“I’m sure she is,” was Lena’s monotone reply.

“And blonde.” 

“ _ James _ ,” Lena groaned. “I am very busy.” 

“Okay. Okay. Point taken. I’ll go. Just wanted to keep you in the loop.” 

“Keep me in the loop with a text next time,” Lena said, keeping a careful eye on him as he let himself back out of her office. 

Only a guy would think that something like hair color was the most interesting thing to lead with when describing a woman. 

He could have at least been more specific. 

Like, was her hair honey blonde or more of a strawberry blonde?

*

Kara stared at a bead of condensation as it slowly traveled down the beer bottle in front of her. She needed a drink to keep her mind from racing over the photo shoot tomorrow, but she also wanted to be clear headed in the morning, and mixed drinks tended to give her a wicked sugar headache. But the carbonation of the drink was making her feel bloated faster than the alcohol in it could quiet her thoughts, so she found herself obsessing over tomorrow nonetheless, the conversation going on around her not even phasing her until she heard her name repeated several times. She looked up to see Alex, Kelly, and Winn looking at her expectantly. 

“What?” Kara asked. 

“I asked if you’re nervous about tomorrow,” Alex said. 

“Nope. Not at all,” Kara lied. 

“Really?” Kelly asked. “Cuz the shredded label on your bottle would say otherwise.” 

Kara shrugged, flicking the pile of damp paper scraped off of the beer bottle in her absent anxiety away from her. 

“Personally, I think it’s cool as hell,” Winn chimed in, giving Kara a harder-than-intended pat on the back, his motor skills affected by his trying to get the most out of half-priced happy hour as he could. “I mean, I would love to get my picture taken with a sexy stranger. If nothing else, to show to my ex to make her think I’m not, like, still hung up on her. Which, I’m not.” 

“Sure you’re not,” Alex said, stealing one of his fried pickles. 

“Why does everyone keep insisting she’ll be ‘sexy’?” Kara asked. “You don’t know what she looks like.”

“Oh come on, Kara,” Winn said, waving the bartender down to bring them another round. “She could be a model or something!” 

“Maybe she’s looking for a wife,” Alex said with her mouth full, waggling her eyebrows at Kara. 

“ _ Enough _ ,” Kara groaned, gratefully accepting the fresh drink placed in front of her and moving the empty, label-less bottle off to the side. 

“Kelly, you gotta be able to tell us more about this girl,” Winn urged.

“I told you, I can’t,” Kelly replied. 

“Can’t? Or won’t?” Alex asked.

“I really can’t! James didn’t tell me who it is.” Winn and Alex collectively gave her a doubtful look. “I’m serious! I really don’t know anything!” 

“Uh huh, likely story,” Alex teasing, giving her wife a peck on the cheek as if that could coax information out of her. “Well I hope she’s at least the chatty type. Because my sister has apparently gotten to the point of anxiousness that she has lost the ability to speak.” 

Kara rolled her eyes. 

“You would be nervous, too, okay?” she defended. “Especially considering James is being amazingly cryptic about the whole thing. You’d think I’m taking photos with a celebrity or something.”

“Maybe you are!” Winn suggested excitedly. 

“Pfft,” Kelly scoffed. “James isn’t cool enough to know any famous people.” 

“This is just so...weird. Not knowing, you know?” Kara mused. “I mean, I could have passed her by on the street or something and had no idea.” 

“Or at the gym, more accurately, seeing as you’ve all but been living there for the past couple of weeks trying to buff up for the shoot.” 

“No she hasn’t,” Winn said in disbelief, and then proceeded to poke at Kara’s biceps and shoulders. “Oh my god, you have! You’re fucking jacked!” 

“Winn, stop,” Kara said, batting his hand away. “And there’s nothing wrong with having a good workout routine.” 

“Nothing wrong with getting all buff to meet the sexy mystery lady, either,” Winn replied with a wink. 

“Ugh,” Kara said, all but letting her head tap the bartop so she could hide the flush on her cheeks. “Why did I agree to this?  _ Why _ ? I’m so stressed out.”

“Kara, listen,” Kelly said, slipping seamlessly into her therapist's voice. “You can’t let all the ‘what ifs’ and unknowns get to you. There’s an exercise I do with my patients, if you wanna walk through it real quick?” 

Kara nodded, willing to take any advice she could get. Even if the advice was ‘cancel the photo shoot’. Which seemed like a great piece of advice right about now. 

“Okay,” Kelly continued. “So, in your mind, what is the worst possible scenario of what will happen tomorrow?” 

“The worst? Hmm,” Kara thought for a minute, taking a swig of her drink. “Okay. Worst case: the girl completely hates me, we don’t get along at all, I ruin James’s photo shoot, and do something klutzy that breaks something or injures someone.”

“Yikes,” Alex says with a chuckle, more than used to the way Kara could catastrophize things.

“Alright. And what is the best case scenario in your mind?” 

“Uh...me and the mystery girl get along really well. The photo shoot goes smoothly. James gets some awesome photos out of it. I’m somehow magically not my nervous, twitchy self, and…”

“You two  _ fuck _ ,” Winn supplemented crudely. “And live happily ever after,” he added for good measure. 

Kara glared at Winn. 

“And maybe I get her number and we hang out after. That’s what I was gonna say, jackass,” Kara replied. 

“Good. Okay,” Kelly said. “So we have the worst case scenario, and the best case scenario. Now, logically speaking, you’ll most likely land somewhere in the middle. Which would be...you and this girl get along reasonably well, the photo shoot goes mostly smoothly, you might do something a little klutzy that will probably be a good icebreaker for the two of you, and you get her number. Maybe you hit it off, maybe you don’t, but overall, it will be a good story to tell.” 

Kara let out a long, soothing sigh. 

“You’re good at this. You should consider being a therapist or something,” she said, eliciting an appreciative laugh from her sister-in-law. 

“Just take a shot before you show up at the shoot. It’ll calm you down,” Alex suggested.

“Alex, I’m not gonna do a shot before driving to the location.” 

“Of course you’re not. Because you’re not driving. I am.” 

“What?” Kara said, nearly spitting out her drink. “Why?” 

“So you don’t bolt! Duh!” 

“Alex! I do not want my sister to be there for this!” 

“I won’t be! I’ll drop you off and pick you when you’re done, then we’ll go for drinks after so you can decompress. And if it goes well, you can invite the girl to join us so I can decide if she’s worthy of you or not.” 

“You’re the worst, you know that?” 

“Oh, hush, you love me,” Alex quipped, planting a big, sloppy kiss on Kara’s cheek, Kara squirming to get away from her. 

*

Lena swirled the scotch around in her glass, transfixed by the way the amber liquid crashed and swirled over the large circular orb of ice in the middle of it. She had the tv on, but she kept getting annoyed by it, thinking every program was too loud or obnoxious or distracting to be tolerable, so she’d put it on mute, leaving the picture on just so she wouldn’t have to admit that she was sitting alone in her apartment on a Friday night doing nothing but obsessing over the impending photo shoot in the morning. Nothing was worth this much stress…

Feeling fed up, Lena took out her phone and made a call. 

_ “Hey, buddy,” _ James said in an old, familiar greeting he liked to give her.  _ “What’s up?” _

“I won’t do it.”

_ “Do what?”  _ he asked innocently.

“You know what.”

_ “Oh come on, Lena,”  _ he pleaded.  _ “Don’t do this to me.” _

“Already done. I’m locking my door and not answering my phone for the rest of the weekend. Find another girl.”

_ “The night before? Not possible.” _

“Then cancel it.” 

_ “Lena,”  _ James said with a knowing sigh.  _ “You really want to leave a sweet, charming, beautiful woman who was so excited to meet you, just hanging by cancelling on her at the last minute? Have you no heart?”  _

“Don’t start your shit, James. I’m serious.”

_ “Yes, I know, and I saw this coming. Which is why I came prepared.”  _

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

Lena heard the buzzer at her door. Confused, she got up and checked the video security cam at the entry of her apartment building, and saw James and Lucy waving towards it jovially. 

“Buzz us up, Luthor! We brought booze!” Lucy said, holding up a bottle of what she knew was Lena’s favorite ‘cheap’ scotch. Even she couldn’t justify spending what it cost for a bottle of her ‘favorite’ scotch.

“Ugh,  _ fuck _ ,” Lena groaned, and hit the button allowing the pair entry to the building, already knowing that somehow, some way, they were going to talk her back into doing the shoot tomorrow. 

Maybe a part of her was even hoping they would.

*

“Kara?” 

“Hmm?” 

“Please stop pacing. You’re making me nervous.”

“Oh you’re nervous?  _ You’re _ -ha!  _ I’m _ freaking nervous, Alex.” 

“You realize your voice is almost a full octave higher than normal, right?” 

“It is not!” Kara replied, only then hearing the high pitch in her voice. “Crap. It is.” 

“Uh huh. Come here. Take the shot,” Alex said, pulling the cork off of the tequila bottle and pouring a generous shot into a whiskey glass. 

“Alex, I don’t want alcohol on my breath when I get there. What kind of impression would that make?” 

“That’s what the mints are for,” Alex clarified, tapping to the pack of mints next to the whiskey glass. 

Kara tapped her fingers against her sides anxiously, staring at the clear liquid waiting for her in the glass. 

“Screw it,” she said, surging forward to the kitchen counter and tilting the shot back, tossing the lime wedge Alex had cut for her into her mouth to make the burn of the spirit subside. “Oh, God,” Kara said through a cough.

“Smooth, right?” Alex asked. 

“Yeah,” Kara wheezed in reply, and grabbed the pack of mints. “Okay. Let’s go before I change my mind. And don’t do that thing where you drive really slow just to make me anxious about being late.” 

*

“Stop pacing,” James said passively as he double checked the settings on one of his cameras. 

“She’s late,” Lena said, turning on her heel once she had met the farther right wall of the top level of the parking garage James had decided to use as the first location of the shoot. Now, granted, there were some decent views of the city from up here, but who the hell picks a parking garage for a photo shoot? 

“Yeah, by two minutes. Chill.” 

“You know how I feel about punctuality, James,” she said as her kitten heels clacked past him as she made another lap in her pacing.

“Uh huh.” 

Lena let out a huff of breath, annoyed by how casually James was reacting to her mini meltdown. 

“She’s not coming,” Lena said, stopping in her tracks. “We should go.”

Lena turned to walk towards her car. 

“Forgetting something?” James asked, and then procured her car keys from his pocket, jingling them teasingly. 

“Oh. So I’m being held against my will now. Fantastic.” 

“I should have brought edibles or something to chill you out.” 

“Ugh, that was  _ one _ time.” 

“You convinced yourself you had figured out how to master time travel. It was hilarious.” 

Just as Lena contemplated assaulting James and taking her keys back, she heard his phone ping with a notification, and her stomach instantly flipped. 

“Oh. She just pulled in,” he said, and put the camera’s strap around his neck, careful not to be too rough with his favorite camera. “Ready?” 

“No,” Lena groaned, surveying her surroundings quickly to note her exit points. 

Sighing, James put his hands on Lena’s shoulders, squeezing them reassuringly and giving her a warm smile. 

“It’s okay to be nervous. It would be weird if you weren’t. But this is going to be fun, I promise!”

Lena looked up at him doubtfully. 

“Seriously. It will be so much fun. As long as you loosen up a bit. Okay? Now Stand here,” he said using his grip on her shoulders to shift her to her left, until she was standing a few paces in front of the elevator doors, but facing away from them. 

James winked at her, mouthed ‘don’t move’, and picked up his phone. 

“Hi! Yeah. We’re up at the top level. See the elevator by the entrance? Yeah, take that. But listen, face away from the doors, okay? Cool. See you in a sec.” 

“Away from the doors?” Lena asked. 

“Yeah. And you face the other way. Adding to the suspense, Lee.” 

“Don’t fucking call me that. I  _ hate _ that.” 

“I know, I know. But it just rolls off the tongue.” 

“Fuck off,” Lena spat, in her usual way of lashing out and swearing unnecessarily when she was nervous. She faintly heard the sound of an elevator humming it’s way towards the top of the garage. “Oh shit,” she said, her stomach flipping over again. 

Seriously, why was she so  _ nervous _ ? 

James stood adjacent to Lena by a few feet, so she could see his expression as he faced towards the elevator doors, one hand idly holding his camera and the other resting on his hip. He looked very calm. He had no reason to be a nervous wreck, after all. He was just there to document Lena short circuiting over getting up close and personal with a girl she’d never met before. Then she saw his face light up as the elevator doors presumably opened, and Lena thought, for the first time since a rush party she foolishly went to in college which became infamous for it’s nearly lethal rum punch, that she might genuinely throw up. 

“Hey! Nice to see you again!” he said to the spectre somewhere behind Lena.

_ Again _ ? Did he know this girl? Or had they met before the shoot so he could get to know her better? 

“You too,” a voice replied, a bit higher pitched than Lena had expected to hear, for some reason, but the overall tone of the voice was warm, pleasant even. “Except, well, I can’t really see you. So. Um. Nice to...hear you? I guess?” 

The girl in the elevator let out an awkward chuckle. Lena instantly felt a bit more at ease. If her stammering and chuckling was any indicator, she was nervous, too. Though probably not nearly as much as Lena. James cleared his throat quietly. 

“So,” he said. “You two are facing away from one another at the moment. Now if you could both take a few steps backwards, please?” 

Lena let out a calming breath, and did as James instructed, careful not to trip on her own heels as she stepped cautiously back. She heard a dull thumping sound, followed by a soft “crap” whispered from the other girl, and tried to suppress a laugh at what she could only assume was the girl tripping herself up as she walked backwards. This suspicion was confirmed by James hiding his own laugh behind his hand. 

“Perfect, alright, stop there,” he said, turning his camera back on. 

“You know this really does feel like a hostage situation, James,” Lena said dryly. 

She heard the woman behind her laugh softly, and she found that she rather liked the sound of it. 

“Or a duel,” the girl quipped back.

“I’m just trying to capture the moment you guys meet, okay?” James said, a bit surprised that he was already being teased by both his subjects. “Now on the count of three, turn and face each other. One. Two...three.” 

Lena gulped past the final rush of nerves she felt, and slowly turned. When she did, her breath caught in her throat.

_ Oh shit,  _ Lena thought.  _ She’s hot.  _

*

_ Oh shit,  _ Kara thought, as she was met face to face with one of the most breathtaking women she had ever seen in her life. And she did mean face to face, not realizing that her stumbling backwards had brought her barely two feet away from the other woman. Kara didn’t know what she expected her to look like. She hadn’t really, despite all her fretting, put an idea in her mind of what kind of person she had expected to meet when she stepped off of that elevator. But the woman in front of her was above any expectation she may have had, to say the least. Her nearly black hair hung loosely around her shoulders, framing her angular jaw. Bright green eyes shone at Kara, framed only by a simple swipe of eyeliner. In fact her face was almost completely bare or makeup, save for vivid red lipstick that clung to full, slightly parted lips that Kara found herself staring at. 

Kara’s gaze traveled down slowly, somehow surprised by the woman’s casual black button up blouse and form fitting jeans. Something about her presence, the way she stood with naturally good posture and her hands clasped politely in front of her waist suggested she was someone used to effortlessly commanding the attention of everyone around her. But James had asked them to dress casual, so Kara was glad that this woman had obliged, because she was sure that she would have looked like a bum by comparison if she had been any more dressed up than this. Especially since the curve of her hips in those jeans and the swell of her breasts that teased Kara with the barest of glimpses at them beneath a few undone buttons at the top at her blouse made her look otherworldly. 

Kara didn’t know how much time had passed since she turned around. In fact, she was in a sort of trance drinking in the sight of the woman in front of her until the subtle clicking sound of a camera shuttering distracted her. God, how long had she been staring?

A small smile grew on the woman’s lips, her eyes flitting to James and his camera as if she too was just remembering that he was there. Her cheeks filled with color, and she dipped her head down towards her chest to conceal a flustered chuckle. Kara heard a nervous laugh bubble out of her in response, glad to see that she wasn’t the only one feeling shy as she adjusted the glasses on her face. 

“Hi,” the other woman finally said, cheeks still shaded slightly pink but seemingly over her initial shock of their meeting. 

“Hi,” Kara said back, laughing nervously again despite her best efforts to keep her composure. “I’m, um, I’m Kara,” she said, extending a hand instinctively. 

The other woman hesitated a moment, as if she was deliberating on whether she wanted to tell Kara her name or not, before taking Kara’s extended hand in her own with a gentle touch instead of a true handshake. 

“Lena,” she finally replied, glancing down at their joined hands briefly. 

_ Lena,  _ Kara committed to memory.  _ Lena. Lena. Lena.  _

James’s camera continued to shutter from his respectful distance away from them. Lena cleared her throat, Kara admiring her neck and the way it tensed from the action. Her breathing in Lena’s presence had gone from automatic to manual, actively having to think about inflating and deflating her lungs as a change in the wind brought a hint of Lena’s perfume to her nostrils. 

“That’s going to take some getting used to,” Lena said, eyes flitting over to James. 

Lena’s voice was naturally low in tone, the kind of voice that you wanted to listen to for hours on end until it put you into a deep meditative state where nothing else existed but those soothing tones. Kara’s fixation on the sound of it caused a delay in her brain, taking a moment to register what she had actually said. 

“Oh! Right,” Kara said with another nervous laugh, wishing she could stop doing that so Lena wouldn’t think that she was always this much of a giggly idiot. “Yeah. It’s...it’s definitely a little weird knowing your every move is being documented. But I guess that’s part of the fun, right?” 

“If you say so,” Lena replied with a small smile, her eyes tracing Kara’s frame slowly. 

_ Seriously, Kara, breathe,  _ she thought as she followed the trail of Lena’s eyes down and then back up until their gazes met again.

“Okay! Now that we’ve made introductions, you guys ready to get started?” James asked, tugging their attention away from each other. 

Kara didn’t know James all that well, but she knew a self satisfied grin when she saw it.

*

James wanted to get a few shots of them sitting on the ledge of the parking garage, with the view of the city behind their backs. Kara seemed to have no issue with sitting so close to what had to be at least a one hundred foot drop, hopping up onto the ledge and letting the backs of her shoes tap rhythmically against the cement wall, waiting for further instruction from James. Lena, on the other hand, refused to even let herself look over the ledge, and instead faced away from the edge, stepping backwards awkwardly until her back was pressed against the wall next to Kara.

“Kara, you stay right there. Good,” James instructed, all the casualness in his voice gone as he became immersed in his work. Lena had noticed this about him from previous shoots she had done with him. He was all jokes and snark up until the lens came to his eye, and then he was a completely different person; an artist in pursuit of perfection from himself and his subjects. “Could part your knees a bit more? Yeah, so that Lena can stand with her back against your chest? Perfect.” 

Lena shuffled her way over to Kara, looking at the ground instead of the skyline behind her as she rested her legs against the cement wall, taking slow, methodical breaths as she leaned back against Kara. It was a simple enough pose, Lena slotted between Kara’s legs as Kara sat casually on the ledge, high enough off the ground that her chest was level with the back of Lena’s head. Something about this pose seemed nearly impossible for Lena to accomplish, however. Every time she tried to settle against Kara, she got intimidated by her closeness to the woman behind her and to the ledge she perched on. But Kara’s sat firm behind her, never moving or faltering, her breathing steady and calm. Lena’s body went rigid in such close proximity to Kara, like she was a kid in a high end store, afraid to touch anything. 

“Okay, Lena, can you relax your shoulders a bit? Kara’s not gonna bite. Or maybe she is, I dunno.” 

Lena felt the vibration in Kara’s chest as she laughed at James’s awful joke. Kara seemed to laugh a lot. She guessed it was from nerves, which she could empathize with. Lena missed the sound of it whenever she stopped. 

“Kara, could you lean on your left hand and look away from the sun? Yeah. Lean back a little bit?” James asked.

Kara took to his instructions easily, even as she leaned back far enough that she was dangerously close, in Lena’s opinion, to toppling backwards. 

“Doesn’t that freak you out?” Lena asked, perplexed at Kara’s coolness as Lena felt a cold sweat forming just from watching her lean so far out. 

“What? Being up here?” Kara asked, looked down at the long drop below her, and then shrugged. “Not really. I’m not afraid to fall.” 

Lena let out a staccato breath through her nose, wondering if her statement had hidden meaning to it. But of course it didn’t, Lena corrected herself, because someone she just met couldn’t possibly be sending coded messages about falling for her.  _ Obviously _ . 

“Great. Now lean back in towards Lena?” James asked. “Closer than that. Closer than that. Still closer.” 

This request seemed to make Kara hesitate where the request for all but dangling off a tall building did not. It was evident from James’s instructions that he wanted the two of them to be pressed as close together as possible, but that request seemed to make Kara falter. 

“I’m getting in your space a little here. Is that okay?” she murmured, her mouth close to Lena’s ear.

Lena shrugged as casually as she could manage. 

“Yeah. It’s fine.” 

And it was...fine. It was a little weird, to be sure. Lena was not typically an invading-personal-space kind of person, especially with someone she met literally five minutes ago. She wasn’t  _ completely _ against being physically affectionate with people. Andrea had used to refer to her as a baby koala when she had missed her after a long business trip. But that was different. That was with someone she felt completely at ease with. Someone she trusted and loved immeasurably. At the time, at least.

“Kara, would you mind moving Lena’s hair to the left side of her neck?” James asked. 

Kara nodded, eyes glancing down at Lena’s to silently check in with her before she did so. Lena gave her a small smile in return. Kara shifted behind Lena slightly, her thighs all but clamped around Lena’s waist and her chest close enough to the back of her head that Lena could feel every breath she took. Kara’s fingers traced up the right side of Lena’s neck as she pulled her hair to the one side. Lena felt goosebumps form where Kara’s fingers brushed, and she wished that she could say it was in a good way. 

Of course Lena thought that Kara was attractive, definitely more attractive than she had anticipated. But she couldn’t help but go rigid in response to her touch. It had just been so long since another woman had been this close to her. Her knee jerk reaction was to bristle in response to it. 

“Okay,” James said with a muted sigh, eyes searching Lena’s face briefly before letting go of his camera and letting it hang around his neck. “Maybe I’m approaching this wrong.” 

Sensing the shift in James’s tone, Kara pulled her hand away from Lena’s neck. Despite Lena’s evasive response to the situation, she didn’t pull away from Kara or try to put any kind of distance between them. A part of her was comforted by the girl’s closeness. Just not enough to overcome her hesitations.

“You guys look really stiff on camera,” James said, not looking up at them at first as he fiddled with the settings on his camera. “Which is fine, it happens. We just have to figure out how to break the ice between you two. I was actually talking to another photographer the other day who did a similar kind of shoot, and she said that the pair didn’t loosen up with each other at first either. But then they kissed, and-”

“James!” Lena burst suddenly, loudly.

“I didn’t say you have to kiss her! It’s just what worked in  _ that _ scenario,” James explained. 

“You  _ implied _ ,” Lena spat, and noticed that Kara pulled back from her a bit, which wasn’t what Lena had wanted, but she couldn’t blame her, either. Lena wasn’t exactly being cooperative thus far.

“Was that the shoot Joyce did a few months ago?” Kara asked unexpectedly. 

“Uh. Yeah, actually,” James replied.

“Those photos were beautiful,” Kara gushed. “I couldn’t believe they weren’t a real couple!” 

“I know,” James agreed. “How did you come across those photos? They were only published in a local photography magazine.” 

“Oh. I uh,” Kara replied, adjusting her glasses on her face, which Lena was starting to notice that Kara did when she was nervous. “I wanted to be prepared for the shoot today. I...like research, I guess.” 

James smiled.

“Well that’s great. But like I said, you guys don’t have to do that. How about this,” he said, pulling the camera off of his neck and placing the cap on the lens. “We have a short drive to get to the next location. Lena, why don’t you and Kara ride together? Get to know each other a little better before we try again.”

“Oh, you’re just full of ideas today, aren’t you?” Lena quipped. 

She knew she was being short with James, and she knew that this probably wasn’t the best first impression to make on Kara. But she was more on edge than she had anticipated, and when she was on edge she got lippy. In reality, having a few moments alone with Kara without James instructing them and watching them sounded like a great idea. Much better than making out with someone she just met, and James more than likely taking a couple pictures of it because this was the worst photoshoot  _ ever _ . 

Lena forced herself to take a moment to breathe and collect herself before she spoke again. 

“That’s fine with me,” she said, trying to inject some kindness into her tone. “Kara?” 

Kara crawled away from her perched position behind Lena and hopped down from the ledge.

“Sure,” she replied. “Let’s do it.” 

*

Kara followed quietly behind Lena as she walked to the next level down from the parking garage roof towards her car. She felt bad about Lena’s blatant stress in regards to the photoshoot, feeling like she was somehow responsible. Maybe she was the problem. Maybe Lena didn’t like her, and didn’t want to be anywhere near her. 

Lena’s pressed a button on her key fob, and a very expensive looking white sports coupe beeped in response. Lena strode over to it silently and opened the passenger door, holding it open expectantly for Kara. Kara chuckled lightly in response. 

“What?” Lena asked. 

“Nothing. It’s just...I don’t think anyone has ever held the car door open for me before.” 

“Oh...well...” Lena said, and then faltered, blushing slightly and focusing her gaze away from her. “That’s more of a statement about the company you keep, I would think.” 

Kara had something snappy to say in response, but the words fell out of her head as got into the passenger seat and looked around Lena’s car, shocked by how clean it was. 

“Looking for something?” Lena asked as she got into the car.

Kara was starting to notice that Lena had a very dry sense of humor. It had seemed like she was being standoffish at first, but Kara was getting used to it. 

“You’re a clean freak, huh?” Kara asked as Lena turned the key and the car came roaring to life with a luxurious purr. 

“What makes you say that?” Lena asked. 

“Well, it’s just that I’ve never seen a car with literally  _ nothing _ in it. My car looks like a bomb went off. I don’t even know what all is in there. Plus it’s September, so like. It’s cold in the morning. And then hot in the afternoon. And then cold again at night. So I have to keep like four changes of clothes in there at all times. And…” Kara stopped herself. “And I’m rambling.” 

“Just a bit,” Lena replied with a small smile, and let the tires chirp slightly as she peeled out of her parking spot. 

The two women fell silent for a moment after that. Which Kara convinced herself was  _ wrong _ and  _ bad _ , because they were supposed to be breaking the ice. And if she was going to participate in this photoshoot, she was going to do so to the best of her ability. And she couldn’t do that if she could barely talk to the girl she was supposed to be getting up close and personal with.

“So how did you get roped into this project, anyway?” Kara asked. 

Lena licked her lips, considering her response before she spoke.

“James and I are old friends. He drags me into these kinds of things every now and then.” 

“Well that makes more sense than my theory.” 

“Which was?” 

“I thought you were an aspiring model or something.” 

Lena scoffed. 

“You’re not serious,” she replied dryly. 

“Well you’re...freaking gorgeous. So yeah. I did.” 

Lena looked away from the road long enough to give Kara a curious look. 

“So you’re a charmer, then, is that it?” Lena asked. 

“Just being honest” Kara replied with a shrug. “But now I don’t know what to think. I never imagined James having any friends with spotless, really expensive...what the hell kind of car is this, anyhow?” 

Lena cleared her throat, like she was deciding if she was going to tell the truth or not, which Kara was noticing a pattern of. 

“It’s an Astin Martin,” Lena replied quietly, focusing wholly on her driving. 

“What?” Kara burst, double checking that her shoes weren’t dirty and getting stains on the floor because what the  _ fuck _ . “Like James Bond’s car?” 

Lena cleared her throat again, this time out of modest embarrassment. 

“It’s used, if that makes you feel any better.” 

“It does  _ not,”  _ Kara said. “You drive James Bond’s car! What do you even do for a living to drive this?” 

Lena shrugged. 

“I work for a tech company in the city,” she said coolly. “The car was...given to me by one of the higher ups of the company when he was done with it. I would never go out of my way to buy something so outrageous.” 

“Oh,” Kara said, deflating. She’d had a whim in her head that maybe Lena was some kind of eccentric millionaire. “That makes sense, I guess.” 

“What about you?” Lena asked as she veered the car onto the interstate with an almost impatient rumbling of the engine, like it was desperate to turn the 8 lane highway into a racetrack. “What do you do?” 

Kara heard Lena’s question, but was delayed in answering for a few seconds as her fingertips traced the trim of the leather of the console between them, like it would somehow feel different than regular leather just because it was in such a fancy car. 

“Oh I’m...a personal assistant,” she said, brushing off the title like she normally did when anyone asked, already expecting some judgement for her lowly position. 

“Really?” Lena replied with genuine curiosity. “For who?” 

“Cat Grant,” Kara said, surprised by Lena’s interest. “She’s the-”

“Oh I know who she is,” Lena replied in that low, gravely tone that Kara was becoming somewhat obsessed with. “I also know she has a reputation for abusing her staff in whatever ways she can legally get away with. How long have you been working for her?” 

“Two years,” Kara replied. 

“Wow,” Lena replied, veering the car smoothly into the fast lane and buzzing past half a dozen cars like it was nothing. “You must be pretty tough, then, to put up with her that long.” 

“She’s not that bad, actually, once you get to know her,” Kara replied instinctively. 

“Kara,” Lena said, giving her a deadpan look. “You can be honest with me. I am a lockbox of secrets.” 

Kara chuckled. 

“Fine. She’s terrible. But I actually do like working for her. I know that sounds weird.” 

“Not really,” Lena replied. “You like a challenge, is that it?” 

“Maybe,” Kara said, suddenly remembering, after having gotten lost in the ease of their chat, what James had expected them to do during the drive. “I like the challenge of seeing if I can get you to loosen up for the rest of the photoshoot, for starters.” 

“Oh,” Lena replied with a surprised chuckle, not expecting that response. “That certainly is a difficult challenge to take on. I’m sorry I...sort of locked up on you there earlier.”

“Lena, really, it’s fine. It’s not like it’s a normal, everyday thing to have to get all...touchy with someone you’ve never met before.” 

Lena nodded her head in concession to Kara’s words.

“Well my hesitations have nothing to do with you, just for the record.” 

“Oh good! Here I was thinking you thought I was intolerably unattractive or something.” 

Kara felt her confidence growing. Something about Lena’s shyness back at the parking garage made Kara want to push past her own shyness in order to pull Lena out of her shell. Because every time she did, she was rewarded with a smile. And she really liked making Lena smile. And despite all odds, compared to their blunder trying to do the first few poses James had asked them to do, she could already feel Lena’s guard coming down, ever so slightly. Which meant that whatever she was doing was working. Kara felt some pride in cracking through Lena’s shell, piece by piece. She genuinely wanted to know more about her. Something about her was captivating to Kara. Maybe it was her appearance, her wit, or the fact that she carried this air of mystery to her like a signature perfume. Kara wanted to know absolutely everything about her.

“I’m sure you didn’t actually think that,” Lena quipped back as she skirted through three lanes of traffic to get off the exit she had nearly missed. 

“I did!” Kara replied, gripping the console briefly in response to the jerk of the car. “What else was I supposed to think?” 

“Kara…” Lena said with a perplexed sigh. “I assume you have seen yourself in a mirror somewhat recently. And therefore must already know that no one in their right mind would find you unattractive.” 

Kara felt a blush forming on her cheeks, made worse when she glanced over at Lena to see her considering her features appreciatively. 

“So why the hesitation, then?” Kara asked, emboldened by the rush of adrenaline from Lena’s borderline reckless driving and the confirmation that they were both attracted to each other. 

Lena’s hands readjusted their grip on the wheel, her fingers stretching out over the white leather, releasing some of her built up tension in them. 

“I don’t know,” she said helplessly. “Maybe because I’m not used to having my picture snapped a bunch of times while a beautiful woman is putting her hands on me. Maybe because I’m not used to having a beautiful woman put her hands on me at all. Not recently, at least.” 

Kara thought back on the tableau they created while she perched on the ledge of the parking garage. James had asked her to pull Lena’s hair away from her neck, and Kara had eagerly obliged, fingers tracing up the length of her neck, noting with a small thrill the way she could hear Lena’s breath hitch in response, until she did a 180 and completely locked up on Kara, like she suddenly could no longer stand her touch. 

“Huh. So just average women put their hands on you, then?” Kara replied daringly. 

“Fucks sake, Kara,” Lena said with a baffled laugh. “That’s not what I  _ meant _ .” 

“I know what you meant,” Kara replied. “So...it’s been awhile. How long, exactly?” 

Lena rolled her eyes playfully at Kara.

“So how do you know James, then?” Lena asked, changing topic as abruptly as she’d changed lanes on the highway. “You seem to be somewhat familiar with each other.” 

“Oh. Uh,” Kara said, and then paused. The whole truth would be to say that she was the sister of his sister-in-law. But telling Lena that whole truth seemed like it would take away some of the fun of the day, making the two of them connected through a mutual friend instead of just appearing to each other like some magical surprise of circumstance. “He was the photographer at my sister’s wedding.” 

“Ah,” Lena replied, tone almost disappointed, as if she had expected more of an explanation. 

“You didn’t answer my question, by the way,” Kara said, desperate to avoid another quiet moment between them.

“Which one?” Lena asked. 

“How long has it been for you? Since you’ve been with another woman, I mean.”  _ She could be bi, Kara, don’t be a dick,  _ she scolded herself. “Or with anyone,” she clarified.

“Is there a point to this?”

“Just answer the question,” Kara pressed. “Please?” 

Lena frowned at Kara briefly as she turned off onto a road that led them, windingly, into a lush treeline of forest, past a large wooden sign that pointed towards different park trails and pavilions with bright yellow paint. 

“A year,” Lena replied. “Give or take a few weeks.” 

Something about Lena’s clarification of not quite knowing how much time had passed told Kara that Lena knew  _ exactly _ how much time had passed, meaning that whatever had happened that last time was monumental in one way or another. And not in a good way. A bad breakup, maybe? Was that why James had pushed this woman, his apparent friend, into the shoot? To help her get over it? 

“Well that’s not so bad. Jeez, you made it seem like it had been eons or something.” 

“What about you, then?” 

“You mean, when’s the last time I-”

“Uh huh,” Lena said as she checked her GPS on the dash of her car, only to huff with annoyance at it’s lack of instruction and start looking more closely at the wooden signs that marked out the trails and rest stops, the road beneath the car growing more rocky and uneven by the second. 

“Uhh…” Kara said, trying to think back on the last time she’d...well… “We talking the full ordeal? Or just…” 

Lena turned away from the road to look at Kara, her right eyebrow quirking upwards like a challenge or a dare. Kara felt her stomach twist into a knot in response to it. 

“Okay,” she said, putting her hands up in surrender. “Hang on, I have to think about it. Uh...pfft...like eight months? At least?” 

“Fair enough,” Lena replied, cryptically withholding any genuine reaction. “Jesus, where the fuck is James taking us, anyhow?” 

“We probably should have followed behind him.” 

“God, no, he drives like a granny. It makes me absolutely insane. Here,” Lena handed Kara her cell phone, “What’s it say in the text he sent?”

“Uh…” Kara replied, surprised by Lena’s trust in a stranger to handle her cell phone, something she never trusted anyone with, even Alex. “He says to park at Pavilion 4, and take the trail next to it north until you hit the river.” 

“Jesus.” 

“What’s wrong? Worried you’ll scuff your heels?” 

Lena laughed in response, really laughed. Not just out of awkwardness or nerves, but a true, honest laugh. And Kara was instantly obsessed with the sound of it. 

“Cute  _ and _ rude. I see how it is,” Lena replied. 

“I should have guessed you were a tightly wound business woman. Who wears heels with jeans, anyway?” 

“I do,” Lena quipped back, pulling the car into the dirt parking space outside the pavilion, and turned off the car. 

“Hang on,” Kara replied, daring to place a hand on Lena’s knee to still her before she exited the car. Lena froze, similarly to the way she had before at the parking garage, but not quite as extreme. Kara swallowed past a swell of newfound nerves before making herself say what was on the tip of her tongue. “Do you think we’ve broken that big block of ice between us enough to keep going with the shoot?” 

Lena turned towards Kara, her tongue escaping her lips just long enough and subtly enough to wet them. 

“I don’t know. Did we?” she asked.

Kara shrugged. 

“Maybe. But I still sense a bit of reluctance.” 

“And you have none?” 

“Not exactly. I’m just saying that…”

“What?” Lena asked softly, and Kara wondered if she knew that she was slowly leaning closer to her…

*

Lena felt herself being pulled, like a magnet, towards the blonde sitting next to her in her car. Which was thrilling and baffling to her at the same time. Only twenty minutes ago she had gone rigid in response to Kara’s touch, and now just one brief drive later, she felt like she had known Kara for years. She couldn’t explain the connection she felt to Kara. Maybe it was her easy way with conversation. Maybe it was the way she turned her face downwards and adjusted her glasses whenever she let out a flustered laugh, which made her seem far too accessible for such a natural beauty. Maybe it was because Lena hadn’t met someone who could call her out on her shit so effortlessly since Andrea. But this felt...easy. And yet, despite her sudden warming to Kara in the span of their trek to this remote location only James could have picked out even though he knew that Lena  _ hated _ the outdoors...she froze again the second that Kara had touched her knee. 

Why did she have to be this way? Why was she so instinctively repelled by the comfort of Kara’s touch? Had she really forgotten how to just  _ be _ with someone after only a year of being alone?

Kara’s eyes searched hers for a moment. It was frustrating, and also completely exhilarating, that Kara had somehow managed to break past several layers of Lena’s carefully constructed armor with almost no effort at all. Just one of those penetrating gazes of hers, and Lena felt like Kara was staring straight into her soul. Maybe that was why she felt herself being pulled in. Despite all her coldness and bitterness, she still was desperately drawn to the idea of someone knowing her so deeply and so quickly and wanting to reach out and touch her nonetheless. 

“I was just thinking about what James suggested. Earlier,” Kara said, and Lena noticed that her pupils were slightly more dilated than they had been the last time she had really considered them, when they had first turned to face each other at their initial meeting. And that her hand was still on Lena’s knee... 

“Meaning?” Lena replied. She knew exactly what Kara was referring to, but she wanted to hear her say it.

“Well,” Kara said, letting one of her shy chuckles bubble out of her before she locked eyes on her again. “He just said that...with the other photographer, that the subjects of the shoot loosened up a lot more once they, uh-”

“Kissed?” Lena supplied.

“Yeah,” Kara said, a pink hue blooming on her cheeks. 

“Is that a request?” Lena asked. 

Kara rolled her lips together, her eyes flitting toward Lena's own lips for a brief second before looking up again, endlessly searching and probing for information with just a look, it seemed.

“A suggestion, I’d rather say. Or a question,” Kara replied softly. 

“Do you want to kiss me, Kara?” Lena asked, inwardly balking at her own forwardness. 

“I only want to do what you’re comfortable with,” Kara said in earnest, but she leaned in further still despite all her caution. 

This led Lena to ask herself: what was she comfortable with? At the beginning of the shoot, her answer would have been little to nothing, if not just to spite her old friend and all his meddling ways. But James had been surprisingly adept at picking a woman who was, at least in regards to the parameters of his little project, perfect in every way. She was soft where Lena was hard and unyielding. She was witty and disarming where Lena was wry and stubborn. And, more so than anything else that Lena had noticed about her, she flowed when Lena ebbed; leaning in when she pulled back, pressing closer when Lena backed off, but only enough to keep her intrigued, and not so much as to make Lena shut down on Kara and her persistent attempts to lure Lena out of her shell. This frustrated and thrilled Lena at the same time. So...she asked herself once again, what was she comfortable with?

Lena looked around briefly at the landscape surrounding them. Hers was the only car in the square patch of brown, sandy dirt that apparently qualified as a parking lot outside of the pavilion. This suggested that in all her need to speed down the interstate, the hum of the engine in her car a comfort and solace in an otherwise uncomfortable day, she had gotten to the location before James. They were, for the moment, utterly alone. 

“Fuck it,” Lena said. “Okay.” 

“Okay?” Kara asked, as if she had genuinely not expected Lena to respond this way. 

Lena sighed heavily, knowing that Kara was  _ too _ good, and that she simply would not do anything without Lena initiating. It annoyed Lena that Kara was doing exactly the right thing. She wished she’d do the wrong thing for just a moment and overwhelm Lena without needing to be asked. 

Lena looked down at the hand resting on her knee, staring at it until her resolve firmed. She took Kara’s hand and removed it from her knee, bringing it up and resting it at the base of her neck. Kara licked her lips, understanding, and her fingertips found the pulse point in Lena’s neck like they had before, grazing her skin with the gentlest touch. Lena wanted to press her face into Kara’s hand, to feel the simple comfort of it. But that felt far too vulnerable a move to make. So instead, she mirrored Kara’s touch by placing a grounding hand on the back of Kara’s neck, and pulled Kara in, connecting their lips in one swift, spontaneous move. 

Lena didn’t linger there for long. She gave herself one long, selfish moment to revel in the sensation of another woman’s lips against her own. She breathed in deep the smell of Kara’s perfume, committing it to memory. And she splayed her hand flat against the back of Kara’s neck to feel the softness of her skin beneath her touch. But once Kara reached her hand up to tangle itself in Lena’s hair, and moved her lips to deepen the kiss, Lena pulled away. 

“Good enough?” Lena asked, her voice a bit breathy despite her best efforts to appear unaffected by the kiss. 

Kara was slow to open her eyes and look at Lena once more.

“Y...yeah,” she stammered.

James’s car pulled up next to them. Lena got out without another word.

“Loosen up at all, your Royal Fridgidness?” James asked as he shut his car door behind him. 

“You could say that,” Lena replied casually, as Kara all but stumbled out the passenger side door behind her, wiping a bit of lipstick from her bottom lip. 

*

“Kara, if you could lean against that tree behind you?” James asked. “Great. Now Lena, you...oh, okay. Go with what’s natural to you.” 

Kara cleared her throat as Lena brought herself in close to her, placing one hand above her head against the tree bark, and laying the other hand on Kara’s side, giving her a quick glance to make sure she was okay with the touch. It was like she was a different person since they got out of the car. Kara really hadn’t expected Lena to kiss her. But when she did…

Golly. 

Kara shook the thoughts from her head, particularly the ones so stupified by Lena’s closeness as to make her think the word ‘golly’. 

James’s camera shuttered as Lena’s eyes seemed to rake slowly upwards from where her hand was placed on Kara’s side up to her eyes. 

“Having fun yet?” Lena asked. 

In a more perfect universe, she and Lena would be alone like this, and not have James as a spectator documenting their every move, preventing her from the initial urges she had in response to Lena’s question. But in that universe, she and Lena might never have met, seeing as a chance circumstance that James had orchestrated in the first place was the only reason they had crossed paths. So she resigned to play the game being formed between the two of them (well, three of them, including the now silent photographer) and reached behind her to encircle her arms around the tree trunk she was leaning against, making herself more open for Lena’s physical advances.

Since their moment in the car, it  _ was _ like she and Lena were playing a game with one another, taking James’s loose instructions and using them to push one another further and further, each moving closer and closer, becoming more daring and intimate with each shutter of the camera. Kara didn’t know what could possibly qualify as ‘winning’ such a game, but she was more than happy to play.

It had started at the riverbed. James had instructed Lena, despite her protests about the dirt and the dampness, to lay against the smoothed sand just beyond where it met the water. After she had made herself comfortable, her elbows pressed into the sand as she propped herself up, James had asked Kara to approach her in “whatever way felt natural”. 

There were several ways Kara could have interpreted this instruction. She thought to crouch down next to Lena, her knees digging into the sand perpendicular to Lena’s, and sitting innocently enough next to her, maybe leaning over her slightly. Or she could have went ahead and laid in the sand next to her, like two friendly enough women sharing a moment in the sun together. But then Lena had given her that look, the same one that had dared her back in the car, to make a move towards her. So Kara chose the third option she had laid out in her mind. She had climbed over Lena, her knees straddling Lena’s hips, and all but laid herself on top of her, holding herself up by her elbows so she still left space between them, but only a few inches. 

Lena had seemed satisfied with Kara’s choice, letting out a sharp exhale through her nose as she smirked up at Kara. 

Now, it had been Lena’s turn to choose how much space they did or did not put between them. And she had responded in kind by closing in on Kara, consuming the boundaries between them, but only touching her with a slight graze of her fingers at her side.

“Great. Lena? Can you bring your face in a little closer to Kara’s?” James asked.

Lena nodded in response to James’s request, lowering her head until her lips all but grazed Kara’s neck. 

“Is this okay with you?” she murmured into Kara’s pulse point. 

Kara gulped. 

“Like I said before, whatever you’re comfortable with,” she said, her voice barely more than a squeak. 

“Well I certainly hope you don’t leave all your choices in the hands of others.”

Kara shrugged casually.

“I guess I’m in a giving mood today.”

Lena laughed, her face dipping down further into the crook of Kara’s neck as she did so, causing Kara to shudder slightly. She’d all but grown used to the sound of James’s camera trying to feverishly capture the scene playing out before it. 

“You’re more fun than I thought you’d be,” Lena said. 

“And you’re more relaxed than I thought you’d be, compared to our first meeting,” Kara quipped back. 

“Yes, well,” Lena replied, taking her hand away from Kara’s side and placing it on the bark of the tree on the other side of Kara’s face, so that she was completely enveloping her, giving them a brief moment of privacy away from the camera’s lens. “I’m only as good as my partner, right?” 

Lena pressed in closer to Kara, so close that her lips grazed the corner of Kara’s mouth. Kara held her breath, silently wishing that Lena would kiss her again, not caring if they had an audience or not. And then, suddenly, Lena pulled away from Kara.

“Your move,” she said. 

_ Game on _ , Kara thought with a thrill.

*

“Now don’t yell at me about this next part,” James said as he swapped out memory cards in his camera, leaning against the hood of his car that he’d managed to bring down the trail and up to the riverbed, far less concerned about getting it dirty than Lena was about her own vehicle. 

“Famous last words,” Lena quipped, standing rather close to Kara a few paces away from James’s car. 

“Ha ha,” James replied dryly, and set his camera down on the hood so he could open up the backseat and grab a few dress bags he had hanging from the hook inside. “Alright, ladies. Time to get in the water.” 

“You’re kidding,” Lena said, locking up at the idea of getting herself soaked in muddy river water and having to touch whatever gross shit could be hiding within it. 

“Nope.” 

“James, you have to  _ warn _ people that they’re going to get wet. I don’t have a change of clothes, or a towel…” Lena protested, noting the amused smile Kara gave her in lieu of similarly complaining to James like she hoped she might have. 

“Ye of little faith, Lena! I got you covered. You will be wearing these,” he said, draping the dress bags over his arm and shutting the car door behind him. “So you can change back into what you’re wearing now when we’re done. And I brought plenty of towels.” 

Lena pursed her lips in annoyance at James, but saw that Kara seemed accepting, if not delighted by the idea of getting in the water, so she kept any further grumblings she had to herself. 

The dresses were nearly identical. They were floor length with long sleeves of delicate lace that covered the entirety of the garments, wide and flowing at the bottom with a thin shift underneath. The only difference between the dresses was that Lena’s was black while Kara’s was an ivory white. Lena scoffed when she noticed this, annoyed that she already knew that the contrast between the two dresses, paired with Lena’s darker hair and stark features next to Kara’s blonde hair and softer beauty, would look utterly stunning on camera. 

Damn him. 

There was a bit of an awkward moment as Lena and Kara had to figure out how and where they would strip out of their clothes and into the dresses without anyone, be it hikers, or each other, seeing them undress. Kara seemed less worried about this than Lena, stripping off her shirt out in the open and pulling the dress over her head until it was secure enough that she could pull off her jeans beneath it. 

Yes, Lena had managed to glimpse Kara in the few moments she was shirtless. And yes, the sight was utterly spectacular. 

Lena, on the other hand, ever the modest one, chose to try and wrestle around with her clothes in the back seat of her car. She managed to get her button up shirt and jeans off with only a bit of struggle, but then realized it was all but impossible to pull the dress on in the tight confines of the back seat of the car without either ripping it or dislocating something. 

Just as she realized she was stuck with the dress bunched up around her shoulders, she heard a knock on the window behind her. 

“Need a hand?” she heard Kara’s muffled voice ask from just outside the car door. 

Lena sighed.

“Yes, please,” she replied meekly. 

Kara opened the car door, the one at Lena’s feet instead of her head, and concealed a muffled laugh as she crouched down into the open car door. Lena felt that the situation was entirely unfair, Kara looking like an honest to god angel in her white lace dress, looking down, with the sun streaming through the trees behind her and illuminating her golden hair, at Lena, who was stuck with her dress over her head. 

Kara gripped one of Lena’s ankles and pulled her towards her until her legs dangled outside of the car. The ease in which she did this just reminded Lena of how strong and firm Kara’s muscles were when Lena had glanced at her briefly as she changed. And that in any situation other than this she would have been delighted for Kara to yank her around like this…

But it was hard to imagine a more sexual scenario when the neck of her dress was cutting off the circulation in her arms.

Kara ducked down to shuffle into the backseat with Lena, struggling to hover over her and wrestle with the fabric of the dress at the same time. Kara didn’t seem all that used to dresses, judging by the way she was extra careful with her own, like she might break out of it if she bent the wrong way, and how she seemed lost trying to help Lena into hers. 

“Here, come here,” Kara said with an exasperated huff, and took one of Lena’s hands in her own, hauling her out of the backseat and onto her feet next to the car. 

Once they were both standing, it took only a moment for Kara to free Lena from her lace prison, pulling the dress over her head and down around her frame, her knuckles grazing Lena’s bare waist as she pulled the dress down around her. Her eyes never lingered, however, never took the easy opportunity to catalog Lena’s curves in her mind. She was more honorable than Lena in that respect. 

“There,” Kara said, running her fingers through Lena’s hair to smooth the strands that had gone awry in the struggle, and then placing her hands gently on each of Lena’s shoulders, gazing at her with those piercing blue eyes. “Perfect.” 

Lena cleared her throat. Somehow Kara had managed to take an embarrassing blunder on her part and turn it into a moment of pure, unpresumptuous intimacy that all but took her breath away.

“Think we’re ready?” Kara asked with a sweet smile. 

“Almost,” Lena said, and reached up towards Kara’s face, gently pulling her glasses off, and taking a moment to admire how she looked without them. “Beautiful,” she murmured, and noticed Kara’s chest rising and falling dramatically in response. “Now we’re ready.” 

“Yeah,” Kara said, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the change. “ Well, let’s hope I don’t trip over a rock and go crashing into the water. I’m blind as a bat without those.” 

*

“ _ Perfect _ ,” James said, his voice higher than normal, a tone reserved, as Lena knew by now, for the excitement he felt when he was really happy with what he was capturing.

Lena and Kara were standing about knee deep in the water, just close enough that their outstretched hands could lay clasped between them. First they had, under James’s instruction, looked straight at the camera with stoic expressions, then down at their hands, then at each other, Lena only cracking a smile when Kara broke and started to giggle under the pressure of their unbroken eye contact. 

“Kara, how strong are you?” James asked, so immersed in his work that his voice was hollow and focused, his mind already on the setup of the next shot. 

“Uh,” Kara said, glancing at Lena for a moment, who seemed to consider her appreciatively, like she was just as curious to find out. “I dunno. Why do you ask?” 

“Could you pick Lena up?” he asked, only looking away from the lens of his camera for a second to look for her response. 

“Um,” she replied, “Like...pick her up how?”

“You know, like…” James began, and held his arms bent upwards in front of his chest, indicating a bridal style carry. “Like that.” 

“ _ Oh _ ,” Kara replied, understanding. “Yeah, sure. I can do that. Lena?”

Lena shrugged, and then waded through the water to close the gap between them, putting a hand on Kara’s shoulder as a silent consent to go ahead and lift her up out of the water.

In all reality, Kara was delighted by this idea. Ever since she had pulled Lena out of the car and helped her get out of her hilarious entanglement with her dress, with her hands just barely touching her exposed skin as she pulled the fabric down from her shoulders to her thighs, Kara had wanted to touch Lena again. And not just a gentle hand grazing her size, cupping her face, or tangling into her hair kind of way. She wanted to  _ grip _ her,  _ caress _ her,  _ overwhelm _ her.

So once Lena placed a hand on her shoulder, bridging the gap between them, Kara wasted no time. She wrapped one arm around Lena’s waist, anchored the other on Lena’s thighs, and pulled her up, holding her with only a bit of effort at the level of her waist. 

“Fuck me,” Kara heard Lena murmur softly, sounding shocked at just how easy it was for Kara to hold her up like this. 

“Is that a request?” Kara countered. 

Lena  _ instantly _ reddened in response to that, likely not expecting Kara to have heard the comment she made.

The camera ahead of them clicked furiously as Lena wrapped her arms around Kara’s neck, curling her body towards Kara just slightly as she adjusted her grip on Lena’s legs and waist until she was able to stand comfortably in the water with Lena in her arms. Kara wished she had a third arm, so she could tuck a stray lock of hair out of Lena’s eyes. She didn’t like it when she couldn't look Lena in the eyes. They were so bright and challenging and full of unspoken promise that Kara felt remorseful when they weren’t locked in on her. But Lena shook her head instead, until her dark hair tossed back behind her, draping over Kara’s bicep, and Kara was content again. 

After a few shots of this, James fiddled feverishly with his mounted camera, like a hunter who just got a twelve point buck in his scope.

“Kara, if you can, dip Lena down a little bit towards the water?” he asked. 

Kara nodded, shuffling her bare feet in the water to make sure that she had solid footing in the mud below, before tilting her body and her grip on Lena off to the one side, slowly, until the ends of Lena’s dark hair just barely touched the surface of the water. Then it was Lena, surprisingly, who pulled herself up and away from the water to bring her face to Kara’s, touching their foreheads together gently and grinning effortlessly, as if they had always meant to be this close. As if Kara holding her with their foreheads pressed together was the most natural and comfortable thing in the world to her. 

Kara felt overwhelmed by this. She felt silly for having such a reaction. They had kissed in Lena’s car, she had laid on top of Lena on the river bed, Lena had pressed herself in close to her against that tree, and Kara had helped her, half naked, into a dress. But a simple enough gesture of Lena pressing her forehead against Kara’s and grinning like she was overjoyed to do so was somehow what did Kara in, made her feel dizzy and off balance. 

So much so, that a moment later, a rock that had loosened from the riverbed knocking into the back of Kara’s left ankle was all it took to throw her off and send her stumbling towards the water. She had enough sense to make sure that she moved her grip of Lena so that she could turn her, pushing her away from the impact, as Kara crashed into the water, Lena falling on top of her with a series of loud splashes.

She thought for sure, given Lena’s protests about the water when James had first suggested it, that Lena would freak out once she had fallen into the river and gotten wet. But as the rushing current that came up to Kara’s chest, in their new and very accidental position, lapped against Lena and her now soaked dress, Kara was surprised to hear Lena laughing. She laughed and laughed and laughed, her forehead pressing against Kara’s collarbone as she hid her face in an attempt to compose herself. And it was infectious, causing Kara to start laughing too as the water rushed over her like she was a part of the riverbed, a natural thing for it to bubble and splash it’s way around.

“You guys okay?” James asked, the shutter of his camera clacking furiously despite his supposed concern. 

“Fine,” Kara replied. “Are you okay?” she asked Lena. 

“Yeah, no thanks to you, you klutz,” Lena replied, beaming down at her. 

For some reason, Kara thought back on the research she had done in preparation for today, specifically the photoshoot she had read about in that magazine she had referenced to James earlier. There was one photo specifically that stuck out in her mind; of the man and woman embraced, their lips connected in a very heated looking moment. Kara had wondered, when she first saw this, how it was possible for two people who did not know each other to be able to kiss like that in front of a camera. But now she understood it perfectly. Because that was exactly what she wanted now. And while, up until this point, she had been extremely careful to only be as close to Lena as she explicitly allowed, Lena looked down at her with such a fond and needful expression that Kara simply couldn’t help herself. 

Kara surged upwards, kissing Lena, and Lena sank into it instantly. And for a moment, nothing else existed. The cold water rushing over them, the intensely uncomfortable dress she was wearing, the shutter of the camera as James immortalized this moment for potentially the whole world to see...all of that faded away. There was just Lena, the weight of her body pressed against Kara’s, the smell of her perfume mingling with the crisp, earthy scent of the woods around them and the rushing water beneath them, and her sharp inhale of breath before Lena sank into Kara’s kiss desperately. 

Kara didn’t know how long this kiss lasted, or which one of them pulled away first. All she knew was that, far too soon, their lips were no longer connected, and they were simply staring at each other with stupefied lust, the cold rush of water pressing into their garments like it was trying to break through to their very bones.

James cleared his throat loudly, if just to remind them that he was even there.

“You know what?” he said, loosening the clamps from the camera mount. “I think that’s a wrap.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said in the summary, this was based off of a similar situation happening to a guy I know a while ago, and being so amused by the bizarre setup and his anxiety leading up to it that I wanted to try and recreate it. (The real photoshoot, if anyone is interested to know, did not go nearly this well. So technically this is a fix it fic lol)
> 
> The photoshoot was really is all I planned on writing, but then I found myself still clacking away into a will they/won't they situation which will be the bulk of part 2. 
> 
> Let me know what you think! (And for those of you who are keeping up with my other SC wips, consider this a first step towards ending my long haitus...sorry about that. Farming takes up most of my time and sanity these days.) Im on tumblr @ schatzietess if you're so inclined to come say hi. Otherwise, pls kudos and comment, I crave that sweet sweet validation...
> 
> Love yinz,  
> Tess


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our story comes to a close as Lena and Kara figure out how to transition their relationship from "flirty strangers with a noticeable lack of physical boundaries" to something more (mild gay panic involved)

Kara’s cell phone was perched precariously on top of Lena’s car as she stripped the soaked and mud stained dress off of her body, when it started to ring. The vibration of the cell phone caused it to lean into the slope of the car’s roof, until it slid off of it and fell onto the ground, Alex’s face that displayed on the call screen becoming littered with dirt from the impact. 

“Crap,” Kara muttered, her dress unzipped and hanging limp around her cold and goosebump covered waist as she bent over to pick it up. “Hello?” 

_ “Kara?” _ Alex asked, her voice garbled from the bad reception out in the woods.  _ “It’s been, like, three hours. Are you guys done yet?”  _

“Yeah,” Kara struggled, placing her phone on the roof of Lena’s car again and putting it on speakerphone so she could talk and change at the same time. “We’re just getting wrapped up now.” 

_ “Cool,” _ Alex said. “ _ So? How did it go? Is she hot?”  _

Kara’s eyes snapped up to see Lena, who was changing on the other side of the car, not nearly as shy about undressing in front of Kara as she had been before, raise her eyebrows in amusement in the direction of Kara’s phone. 

“You’re on speakerphone, by the way,” Kara replied with lament. 

_ “Oh shit, did she hear me?”  _

“Yup,” Kara said, mouthing ‘sorry’ in Lena’s direction, who only chuckled mutedly in response as she tried to locate her shoes. The two of them pulling their clothes back on out in the open like this made if feel very much like they were composing themselves after a quick hookup. Which, Kara  _ wished _ . 

_ “Well I guess I’ll torture you for information later, then.” _ Alex said. “ _ I’ll come pick you up at the parking garage?”  _

“Uh,” Kara said, struggling as she yanked the dress up over her head. “Actually, we’re not there anymore.” 

_ “Well, where are you?” _ Alex asked impatiently. 

“I...don’t know, exactly.”

_ “Kara how am I supposed to pick you up if you can’t tell me where you are?”  _

“I-” Kara replied with a huff, struggling to pull her jeans up over her legs that were still slightly damp from the river water. “Can you chill for a minute, Alex? I’m in the middle of something.” 

_ “In the middle of  _ what _?”  _ Alex asked with a hint of scandal in her tone.

Lena, who was finished changing, walked around the front of the car and handed her photoshoot partner a dry towel. Kara was so eager to wrap it around her shoulders to warm up that she missed Lena picking up her phone.

“Hi, Alex, was it?” Lena asked into the receiver. 

Kara froze. Lena had made the conscious decision to try and talk to her sister, meaning that she had no  _ idea _ what she had just gotten herself into.

_ “Yes?” _ Alex replied.  _ “And who are-” _

“I can drive Kara home, if that makes things easier for everyone,” Lena replied, expertly cutting Alex off before she could start grilling her with overly personal, borderline inappropriate questions like she did with every other person Kara had ever dated.

Not that Kara assumed she and Lena would go on a date. Or get to the point that they would meet each other’s families. Or anything like that. 

“ _ Oh _ ,” Alex replied. “ _ I mean...I guess so, sure. But just so you know, Miss Mystery Woman, I was gonna bring Kara back to my house for dinner. She’s got a wicked metabolism. Can’t go more than a couple hours without eating or she turns into a hangry demon. _ ” 

“Alex,” Kara groaned as she swiped the towel vigorously through her wet hair, her shirt still draped over the hood of Lena’s car. 

_ “So. Unless you want to continue to starve my poor sister, I’ll have to ask you to bring her to my house, where I am about to get a boat load of pizza and potstickers delivered.”  _

Lena looked over at Kara, eyes wide. 

“Why do I feel like this is a hostage negotiation?” she whispered to Kara, holding her hand over the mic of the phone.

“Because it is,” Kara hissed. “You don’t have to agree. Although...I am really hungry. And I  _ love _ potstickers.”

Lena mulled over Kara’s response for a moment, and then shrugged.

“Consider it done,” Lena replied, giving Kara a smug wink as she handed her phone back to her, her eyes lingering on Kara’s still exposed skin.

“K, love you, bye!” Kara said into the phone quickly before hanging up. “So…” she said, looking up at Lena. “You’re taking me to my sister’s place?” 

“I am taking you to your sister’s place,” Lena said cooly, oddly calm, as she handed Kara her shirt.

Kara realized there was a simpler solution. James knew where Alex’s house was, seeing as it was also his sister’s house. He could just give Kara a lift home. 

But that would mean that Kara’s time with Lena would be over. They would say their goodbyes. And maybe those goodbyes would include a swapping of phone numbers, or a promise to see each other soon. Maybe they would even include a quick kiss, seeing as that last one had come so naturally to them. Or maybe, and this was what terrified Kara the most, it would be  _ just _ a goodbye, and Kara would never see Lena again. And while she was more than aware that letting Lena meet Alex might just scare her away, she had to take the chance. Because she had to, just  _ had _ to spend more time with her. As much time as Lena would give her.

“Ladies,” James said from behind them, now that they were both fully clothed and he felt safe enough to approach. “I just wanted to say thank you again for your participation today. The shots I have look absolutely amazing. And I can’t wait for you to see them.” 

“Thanks, James,” Kara replied earnestly. “I had a lot of fun!” 

“Me, too,” Lena said, glancing over at Kara briefly. 

“I’m sure you did,” James replied, giving them both a wink before heading back in the direction of his car. 

“So,” Lena said. “Ready to go?” 

*

Soon after Kelly and Alex had gotten married, they felt that they had outgrown their apartment in the city. They were starting to discuss the possibility of kids, and Alex had been spending so much time looking at dogs up for adoption online that it was only a matter of time before she brought one, or five, home with her. So they upgraded to a modest 3 bedroom house in a quiet neighborhood about twenty minutes outside the city. Kara loved when Alex came to see her at her place, of course, but lately she much preferred coming here. Something about their house truly felt like a home, full of love and warmth. Kara’s apartment, more and more, just felt like the place she slept at night. 

Lena’s car revved a final time as she whipped it into Alex’s driveway The drive over had been oddly quiet. Kara just didn’t know what to say to Lena now. All the nervous excitement of the photoshoot was gone, and with it went the smooth conversation that came with the shared bizarre experience. Now that it was over, they were just two people who barely knew each other and had kissed a couple of times. Which was definitely odd, but not the bonding kind of odd that the earlier circumstances had provided them with. 

Now they sat in Alex’s driveway, both silent but neither moving to get out of the car or say their goodbyes. They didn’t want this connection to end, but they couldn’t figure out how to keep it going, either. 

“So, uh,” Kara finally said, breaking past the unbearable silence. “Thanks for the ride.” 

“Sure,” Lena replied. 

“And thanks for...today. I had a surprisingly good time.” 

“Me, too.” 

The car fell silent again. Kara couldn’t stand it. 

“Do you want to come in and say hi?” Kara blurted out.

“Oh, um,” Lena struggled. “I don’t know if I should. It would be kind of weird, don’t you think?” 

“The whole day has been kind of weird, though, hasn’t it?” Kara replied. 

Lena smiled. 

“Fair point. But still, I-”

“You drove all the way out here. Might as well stop in for a drink? Or a slice of pizza?” 

The self conscious half smile that lingered on Lena’s mouth made Kara ache, made her want to kiss it away. God that kiss at the river had been so…

Kara couldn’t stop thinking about it. Couldn’t stop wanting to recreate it. Couldn’t stop wishing she could work up the nerve to kiss her again. 

“Well, alright,” Lena conceded. “I suppose I can come inside for a minute.” 

Kara literally squealed with glee. She regretted it immensely the second the sound escaped her lips. But Lena had decided to stick around for a bit longer. So that was all that mattered. 

“Great. Okay. Let’s do it,” Kara said, and got out of the car, heading up the steps towards the front door, until she heard music playing in the backyard.

“Alex?” she called. 

“On the patio! Come on back!” Alex called back to her, and Kara turned around to make sure Lena hadn’t changed her mind.

“I’m right behind you,” she said with a warm smile.

Kara had the fleeting urge to reach back and take Lena’s hand in her own. But she didn’t want Lena to feel like she was literally dragging her into this, so she resisted.

*

Lena took a moment to catch her breath and get her bearings. This was certainly...not how she expected today to go. One moment she was meeting a pretty girl for the first time, and then the next she was laying on top of her and kissing her in the middle of shockingly cold river water. Which had been...intense.

But now, not even an hour later, she was about to meet Kara’s sister? This was progressing way too fast. Back when she did date somewhat regularly, Lena had a strict “no meeting the family unless it was absolutely necessary” rule. And it was a good rule. Lena didn’t know what to do with families. Especially happy families. She didn’t understand them. How could anyone be in the same room with their parents or siblings for more than a few minutes without wanting to throw things? 

And Kara’s relationship with her sister definitely seemed like a happy one. She could already hear Kara’s effortless laughter bubbling out from the patio. And Lena had the unwavering feeling that her presence would only somehow ruin things. 

But she had told Kara that she would stay for a little while. And if she  _ did _ want to see Kara again (which she had to admit that she did. Very much so), bailing on her now would not be a good way to ensure that. So she would grin and bear this get together with Kara and her sister, for a little while at least, and hope she wouldn’t be expected to answer any personal questions that would reveal her true identity to either of them. Because, despite everything that had happened today, Kara still had no idea who Lena was. And a very selfish part of Lena wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible.

A cold dread washed over Lena as she walked slowly around the side of the house. She knew she was being silly, and that anyone she was interested in, either for the short or long term, would have to eventually find out who she was and the empire she represented. She went through this process with every girl she had been interested in before. The concealment of her true identity, the anxiety over all the lying, the eventual reveal, and the consequences that followed, be they good or bad. But something about Kara made her genuinely afraid to scare her off. She had only just met her, but she was already terrified of losing her.

Lena noticed that her hands were trembling, so she stuffed them into her pockets and took a deep breath, before rounding the corner to the back of the house to face whatever came next. 

The first thing she saw was Kara, standing under a covered patio adjacent to a set of sliding glass doors that led into the house. She had a beer in one hand, and was running her free hand through her damp hair as she smiled in the direction of the two women sitting around the patio table. One woman, with shoulder length black hair, was facing away from Lena, and the other woman with a bold undercut in her brunette hair and a leather jacket around her squared shoulders, was facing Kara. Lena let out one more calming breath before making her presence known by clearing her throat. 

“Lena!” Kara said excitedly, her mood notably brightened and her body language far more relaxed in the company of her family. “Come say hi!” 

Lena gulped as the woman closer to Kara, who Lena had to assume was her sister, gave her...well, she couldn’t call it a glare, exactly, but it was pretty close. 

“Lena, this is my sister Alex,” Kara introduced, “And this is her wife Kelly.” 

Realization dawned on Lena in slow motion, like a detective looking at a marker board as the clues finally pieced together in a way that made everything clear. 

She thought back on the Instagram comments on James’s initial post about the shoot. A woman named Alex goading K. Danvers into signing up. 

Danvers. 

Danvers. 

She knew that name. It was the last name of Kelly’s new wife. And Kelly, James’s sister, was there, sitting at the patio, turning slowly towards Lena. 

Alex Danvers. K. Danvers... _Kara_ _Danvers_. 

_ Fuck _ . 

Kelly turned fully to face Lena, and recognition dawned on her face. First in wide eyed shock, and then with delighted amusement. 

“ _ Lena _ ?” she asked. “Kara, your photoshoot was with Lena Luthor?” 

Kara blinked, not fully understanding Kelly’s shock. 

“Oh. Right. You guys probably already know each other, right? Since she’s a friend of James?”

“Yeah but…” Kelly began, but then stopped herself. “Yeah. That’s right.” 

“Nice to see you again, Kelly,” Lena said through a strained smile. “Sorry I missed the wedding.” 

Kelly shrugged. 

“It’s okay, I know how busy you are. Come on, grab a drink.” 

Lena stepped cautiously towards the patio, and the white cooler left open for her to choose a beverage from. Lena was not typically a “beer procured from a vat of ice” kind of woman, but she also could really,  _ really _ use a drink right about now.

Kara plopped down in a patio chair next to her sister, who watched Lena very carefully. Kara pulled out a chair on her other side for Lena to sit next to her, and she obliged, feeling so tense that she had to remind herself how normal people sit down.

“Lena...Lena  _ Luthor… _ ” Alex repeated, in an attempt to conjure memory. “I know I know that name.” 

“Alex,” Kara warned, seeming to pick up on Lena’s sudden tenseness. “Be nice, please.” 

“I am being nice! I just know I recognize that name from somewhere!” 

“Alex,” Kelly chimed in, by now aware of Lena’s aversion to call attention to her status. 

“Oh fuck! I remember!” Alex declared, too wrapped up in her train of thought to hear the warnings from her wife and sister. “You’re James’s super rich friend, aren’t you?” 

And there it was.

Lena’s whole body clenched in response.

“I, uh…” Lena struggled. 

“Yeah! Yeah! Luthor as in LuthorCorp, right? Remember, Kara, she was the eccentric millionaire who couldn’t come to the wedding? The one who bought me a new  _ bike _ and Kelly those, like,  _ super _ rare first edition psychology textbooks that were hand written by Freud or some shit?” 

Lena wished she had succeeded in making that time travel device she thought up after a couple of edibles back in college. She could really use it right about now. 

*

Kara took a moment to process all of the information that was just laid out in front of her. Once she had, she felt completely dumb. How had she not put two and two together that Lena was Lena  _ Luthor _ , the co-president of one of the biggest tech companies in the country, known not only for her genius in her field, but also her complete insistence on privacy, which was so thorough that most people didn’t even know what she looked like? She’d even managed to elude Cat Grant, who prided herself on being able to get to anyone she wanted just long enough to pry a few juicy details about their personal lives out of them. 

But she didn’t have long to balk over the realization that she had been holding, touching, even  _ kissing _ one of the richest women in National City. Because she noticed, as she looked up at Lena with fresh eyes, that she looked absolutely panic stricken. 

“You know what?” Lena burst suddenly, putting down the drink she hadn’t even opened yet. “I should get going. It was nice to meet you, Alex, and congratulations on your wedding. Kara, I, uh...I’m sorry,” she said, and all but fled back around the house from where she came.  Alex rolled her lips together, clearly realizing her error. 

“I sorta fucked that up, didn’t I?” 

“ _ Crap _ ,” Kara said, and took off after Lena. 

By the time Kara came around to the front of the house, Lena was already sitting in the driver’s seat of her car, her eyes fixed forward and her knuckles white as she gripped the steering wheel tightly, but hadn’t turned the car on yet. Kara didn’t know what to do or say to Lena to fix what had just happened, but she knew she had to try. So, cautiously, like she was approaching a deer or a stray cat, she came up to the driver side door and tapped gently on the window. Lena jumped nonetheless, not expecting to see Kara. Her throat clenching as she swallowed hard, Lena rolled down the window. 

“Hey,” Kara said, unable to think of anything better than that. 

“Hi,” Lena replied in a breathy tone, chest rising and falling dramatically, clearly distressed. 

Kara knew what had worked last time to get Lena to relax and to open up to her a bit. So, she tried to run the same play, and walked around to the other side of the car, getting in the passenger seat next to Lena and shutting the door behind her. She let them sit in silence for a moment, not wanting to bombard Lena with her rambling or any of the million questions she had for her in her head. In the end, it was Lena who spoke first. 

“It was rude of me to take off like that. I’m sorry.” 

Kara shrugged.

“Well, it was rude of my sister to out you like that, for lack of a better term.” 

“I’m sure her intentions were good,” Lena replied. “Most people in my position aren’t quite so terrified to be acknowledged for their accomplishments as I am. My brother loves to flaunt his money and his power. I just want to feel normal. I want people to look at me and see a regular person, not a title or a dollar figure. I didn’t want  _ you _ to see me that way.”

Kara licked her lips, thinking. 

“So what was your plan, then? To never tell me who you were?” 

“For the first couple of dates, at least.” 

“First  _ couple _ of dates? Gee, you haven’t even asked me out yet, and you’re already planning multiple dates?” 

Kara heard a soft, breathy laugh escape Lena’s lips. 

“I should have told you sooner,” she said shortly after. “I’m sorry.” 

“Oh, please,” Kara replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. “You have nothing to be sorry for. The point of today was that we’re strangers, right? Strangers don’t know how much they have in each other’s bank accounts.” 

“I suppose not," Lena replied.

“I just can’t believe I didn’t figure it out sooner. I mean, really, Lena, a ‘higher up of the company’ gave you this car? I can’t believe I fell for that.” 

“It’s true, though!” Lena insisted. “This was my brother’s car, which he gave to me after he was done playing with it. And he is, technically, a higher up of the company.” 

“And  _ technically _ , so are you,” Kara replied. 

Lena pursed her lips, faltering. 

“Does that change things for you, then? Because I...I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted us to just go our separate ways from here. I know this is a lot to take in.” 

Kara looked Lena over, sad to see that Lena had already assumed that Kara would want nothing to do with her now that she knew her a little better than she had a few moments ago. So just like before, she reached out and placed her hand on Lena’s knee. Lena stared down at her touch for a moment, like she was genuinely surprised by it. 

“Look, Lena,” Kara breathed, her hand squeezing Lena’s knee for a reassuring moment. “I’ll admit that I’m...surprised to find out the woman I spent the past couple of hours basically feeling up is  _ way _ more successful than I am. I mean, I thought I was intimidated by how  _ pretty _ you were. And  _ now-”  _

“Kara for fuck’s sake,” Lena began to protest.

“Hang on, hang on, I have a point,” Kara said with a helpless chuckle. “I just...from the moment I turned around up on top of that parking garage and saw you, I knew I was screwed. I knew that I would do anything to get to get close to you, to get to know you better. And I still want that.” 

A soft smile bloomed on Lena’s face, her cheeks flushing slightly. 

“So do I,” Lena said softly.

“Does that mean you’ll come back to hang out with my family for a little while?” 

“Kara, I don’t know…” Lena began to say, but her words drifted off into silence as the hand on her knee crept it’s way up her side until it settled against the back of her neck, Kara’s thumb rubbing small, soothing circles into Lena’s skin. 

“Is there some way I could persuade you?” Kara asked. 

Lena licked her lips, glancing down at Kara’s mouth briefly, before surging forward to close the distance between them. Kara honestly didn’t expect this. She thought Lena would have waited for Kara to make the first move, considering how vulnerable she seemed just a moment ago. But Kara must have done or said something right. 

Unlike the first kiss, Lena didn’t pull away the second Kara started to kiss her back. And unlike the second kiss, they didn’t have a pair of eyes and a camera lens on them to make them just self conscious enough to keep the heat between them to a minimum. Now, with no one watching and all the cards laid out on the table, Lena pressed into Kara desperately, putting her hands on her sides and tugging at her shirt as if she could bring them closer than the console between them allowed. Kara dug her fingers into Lena’s hair, noticing that it was still a bit damp and gritty from the tumble they had taken into the river. Lena’s hair had been poker straight at the beginning of the shoot, but getting it wet had let it take it’s more natural form of loose curls that Kara found herself trying to memorize the feeling of with her fingertips. It was something to do, at least, to keep her distracted from the intense need she felt for Lena that grew stronger and stronger the longer they kissed. If Kara wasn’t careful, she might be tempted to straddle Lena right there in her sister’s driveway. 

This thought alone caused Kara to pull regretfully away. 

“Is that a yes?” Kara asked mischievously. 

Lena was slow to open her eyes, her pupils blown with lust. 

“Well I certainly can’t go home after  _ that _ ,” Lena breathed. 

“Good! Come on,” Kara said, and let herself out of the car. 

Kara held out her hand behind her for Lena to take to follow her back to the patio. Halfway through their walk to the back of the house, Kara felt her hand being tugged, and she was pulled swiftly back and against the brick wall of the house next to her. Lena pinned Kara against the side of the house, unexpectedly overwhelming her with hands roaming up her sides and down her back, her lips feverishly exploring Kara’s until they were both breathless. 

“Sorry,” Lena gasped. “Couldn’t help myself.” 

“I mean I’m not complaining,” Kara replied with a giggle. “But I’d rather you make a good impression on Alex. And ravishing her little sister in her backyard probably isn’t the best way to do that.” 

“Right. Probably not.”

“Though, speaking of, did you really buy her that motorbike she’s been showing off since the wedding?” 

Lena shrugged. 

“The only thing left on their registry was silverware. What else was I supposed to do?” 

Kara laughed, and then kissed Lena again just because she could.

*

The second time around meeting Kara’s sister went considerably more smoothly than the first. Alex was truly regretful of what she had said earlier, and whatever line of questioning she might have had lined up for her fell by the wayside as Kelly continued to remind her she had to be nice to the woman who bought her her favorite bike. And she was, except for one comment she had to make about the smear of red lipstick that had appeared on Kara’s lips after she had gone to retrieve Lena from her attempted escape. But it seemed more teasing in nature than judgmental. 

A little while after Kara had eaten her weight in takeout, something that was truly alarming and impressive to witness, considering how tiny Kara was, the air turned from lukewarm and pleasant to crisp and biting as the chill of the fall evening began to set in. Lena thought this was a natural time to make her polite exit, and maybe drag Kara along with her so she could continue to ravish her in the privacy of her apartment. But the chill in the air only inspired the Danvers sisters to start a bonfire in the pit in the backyard. Which somehow managed to magically draw more people, as if they were moths to a flame, until this had gone from the small gathering Lena had signed up for to a full blown social event. Lena hoped she didn’t seem rude as she stayed firmly planted in her seat by the fire as Kara kept getting up to greet the people that slowly trickled into Alex and Kelly’s backyard, but what else was she supposed to do? Follow Kara around like a puppy? How exactly would she introduce herself, anyway? She wasn’t Kara’s girlfriend. She was just the woman Kara met this afternoon and had proceeded to spend the rest of the day intermittently making out with. 

This was a very tight knit group of friends, though, as Lena soon learned. They all knew who Lena was, or at least, knew who she was in relation to Kara. To the shorter, kind faced man with who had dressed oddly professionally for a bonfire: Winn, she thought his name was, Lena was “the chick from the photo shoot”. To the girl named Nia who had complimented Lena’s style and features to the point that Lena had blushed from the sheer amount of unexpected praise, she was “the only woman pretty enough to be a good match in front of a camera with Kara”. And to Nia’s boyfriend, who seemed to go by several names, each more odd than the last, she was “the woman with the impressive vehicle. And could he please be allowed to look under the hood? Kick the tires a bit, as it were?” 

And then there were the only other familiar faces Lena knew: James and Lucy. They showed up last, James, wearing that same smug grin on his face he’d given Lena and Kara before leaving them at the park. He was almost instantly bombarded by the rest of the group, who demanded details about Lena and Kara’s photoshoot, seeing as Lena and Kara themselves had been “unfairly” withholding, which gave Lucy the freedom to slip past the hoard and settle into the open seat next to Lena.

“Well I won’t ask you how it went, seeing as I’m sure you’re sick of hearing that question by now,” Lucy said, pulling a bottle of scotch from her purse and passing it to Lena subtly. 

“You’re a fucking saint,” Lena said, both about what she had said and about the bottle she now twisted the lid off of. 

“Don’t go praising me just yet,” Lucy said with a chuckle, “I didn’t bring any glasses.” 

“At this rate?” Lena asked. “I could care less,” she said, and took a swig straight from the bottle. “God, you know what this reminds me of?” 

“When we snuck off with a bottle of what turned out to be  _ insanely _ expensive scotch from your dad’s study while he was busy trying to shmooze my dad and a handful of other highly decorated military goons into a weapons contract?” 

“Precisely,” Lena said with a chuckle. 

“You didn’t get into trouble for that, did you?” 

“Nah, it was always up to his staff to replenish his bar, anyway. He didn’t notice a thing.” 

“Right. Obviously. Doesn’t everyone have enough money and status to never have to go to a liquor store themselves?” 

Lena laughed. There was a very small circle of people Lena tolerated “rich” jokes from, and Lucy was in that circle. While having a military background didn’t put her family on quite the same level as the Luthors or her ex-fiance Andrea’s family, Lucy still understood the burdens of a powerful father more than most. It was that shared understanding that had kept them in touch over the years, even as their lives took drastically different paths. 

“Can I at least ask if James meddling has earned him either a thank you or a punch in the arm?”

“Oh. Both for sure,” Lena said, taking another sip from the bottle and handing it back to Lucy. 

“It is weird that you and Kara never met until today, don’t you think? I mean, considering how you seem to have so many friends in common.” 

“Is it weird, though? You forget how much I recoil from people in general.” 

“Right. Of course, how could I forget?” Lucy said with a knowing laugh. “Still, they’re alright, as far as company goes.”

Lena hummed thoughtfully. She had been panicked when she first started to see Alex and Kara’s friends arriving in the backyard. With each new person that arrived came the new possibility that she might be revealed to them all as ‘different’ from them in ways she could not control. She thought for sure that the car alone might give her away. But the longer the group of friends talked, and laughed, and drank by the fire, the more she thought that they might not even mind if they did know who she truly was. There was something about this odd bunch that felt...safe to Lena. Unassuming. It’s what she always thought friends should feel like. Not the snakes she was used to from prep school and beyond. 

“Still, the fact that you haven’t found a reason to bolt yet must mean that-”

“Lucy,” Lena warned.

“You  _ like _ her,” Lucy said with a waggle of her eyebrows, earning her a half hearted glare.

At that moment, Kara appeared conveniently from the house after disappearing for a few minutes, looking adorably comfortable in a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie she had likely borrowed from her sister. She handed Lena a gray sweatshirt with a blue “National City University” logo on the front that was faded and cracked from years of being worn and washed. 

“Thought you might be cold,” she said with a sweet, unassuming smile. 

“Oh, how sweet,” Lucy said in a joking tone. 

“You shush! You had your chance with me and you threw it away!” Kara said, causing the two of them to fall into a fit of laughter over some shared joke Lena couldn’t begin to comprehend.

“Thanks,” Lena said, feeling herself blush just from the unexpected gesture of consideration and kindness, shooting Lucy another glare as she seemed to beam at the two of them and their effortless closeness.

Once Lena had pulled the sweatshirt on over her shirt, Kara plopped down next to her on the wicker couch she had reserved for them by the fire, unfurling the blanket she had tucked under her arm and draping it over the both of them. Once she had made herself comfortable, Kara got Winn’s attention by hollering out his name and holding her hands up like she was expecting him to throw something. Which he did, a couple of cans from the cooler next to him, which Kara tapped on the tops of to break up the fizz before opening both and handing Lena one of them. 

“Oh, such a gentlewoman,” Lena commented, her tone a bit sarcastic even though she truly did appreciate Kara’s consideration and care for her. She just wasn’t used to being taken care of like this. She was only used to relying on herself.

“I try,” Kara said, bumping her shoulder against Lena’s. 

Based on this gesture alone, Lena had a fleeting thought that Kara would make a really good friend. That was, if she wasn’t already so painfully attracted to her that there was no way she could ever settle for being just friends. She’d never met someone who seemed so naturally equipped to handle all of her quirks and anxieties. And yet here Kara was, dropped into her life by circumstance and by a meddling mutual friend, ready to insert Lena into her life as if she had always belonged there. It was a kind of intimacy Lena had never expected from someone she had just met a handful of hours earlier before, and she was woefully unprepared for it. 

“What?” Kara asked, the glow from the fire and the setting sun beyond the illuminating Kara’s features with a soft, orange and red glow.

“What?” 

“You’re staring,” Kara clarified, her eyes darting down to Lena’s lips, reminding her of the heated moment they had shared earlier and how she would very much like to pick up where they had left off. 

“Am I?” Lena asked, taking a sip of the mystery beverage in her hand. It was a spiked seltzer. Which was...actually not that bad despite the fact that Lena had vowed never to try one.

“Mmhmm,” Kara replied, her eyes widening for a moment like a silent challenge. 

“I suppose I’m afraid to look away. You’re so consistently unexpected that I fear I’ll miss something if I do.” 

“Oh, is that all?” Kara said with a small laugh, adjusting her glasses and considering Lena with the fondest of smiles. 

The look alone made Lena blush. It had been a long time since anyone had looked at her the way Kara did. 

“Hey! Hey!” Alex called out, slightly tipsy. “Hands above the blankets, lovebirds!” 

“Alex, oh my  _ God _ ,” Kara groaned, and made a show of holding her hands up in surrender. “Happy?” 

“Nah. Lena?” Alex pressed. 

Lena held up her hands similarly to Kara’s before laughing off the lighthearted teasing Kara’s sister had no issue tossing her way. When Kara brought her hands back down, Lena didn’t miss how her arm slung itself around Lena’s shoulders.

“Well, James, I think it’s safe to say that if the photography thing doesn’t work out, you’d make a great matchmaker,” Kelly quipped to her brother, who shrugged casually. 

“All I did was pick out two people whose features contrasted in a visually appealing way. The rest of it was all them.” 

“Well, I suppose opposites attract then, huh?” Nia asked with a waggle of her eyebrows in their direction.

“Oh would you guys  _ stop _ ,” Kara groaned. “We haven’t even gone on a date yet!” 

“Then what do we call this?” Alex asked, gesturing to the two girls snuggled up with each other by the fire. 

“I call it being bombarded by my very  _ nosey _ friends,” Kara replied.

“Speaking of, when do we get to see the photos?” Nia demanded. 

“Actually,” James said, pulling his work bag out from under his chair, as if he had planned on being asked this exact question. “I did finish editing a couple before I came over, if you want to take a look.” 

“James,” Lucy warned. “I thought you said you’d leave your computer bag in the car.” 

“But you know I never go anywhere without it, my love,” he said, giving Lucy a teasing grin and a peck on the cheek.

_ Ah, fuck, _ Lena thought begrudgingly to herself, unsurprised the the sudden turn of events but annoyed nonetheless. Lena knew that James did the photoshoot specifically to put out to the public, but somewhere between their first meeting and now, the shoot had become amazingly personal to Lena. It was something that felt like it belonged to her and Kara alone, and anyone even looking at the photos felt like an intrusion. 

“Oh! Whip em out, whip em out!” Winn chanted excitedly, all but ripping the tablet out of James’s hands as he pulled up the photos. 

Lena thought that if there ever was a time for her to excuse herself from the night’s festivities and head home to decompress, it was now. But just as she opened her mouth to announce her planned departure, Kara’s hand reached up to the back of her neck and began to trace slow, languid patterns against her skin with her fingers. And Lena felt herself melting against her touch like an affectionate housecat. Kara was a very  _ physical _ person. It seemed like she displayed all her thoughts and needs through some kind of touch or gesture. And now it seemed like Kara was trying to tell Lena that she understood and acknowledged her discomfort, but still wanted her to stay by her side. And as Kara began to rake her nails through Lena’s hair, smoothing the parts that had become disheveled during the day’s activities, Lena was more than inclined to oblige, her eyes fluttering shut, remembering now how much she loved it when she had someone to play with her hair. 

Meanwhile, the group of friends, save for Alex, who was refilling Kelly’s wine glass for her, had crowded eagerly around James’s tablet, reacting with various “oohs” and “awws” as Winn scrolled through the selection of photos on the screen. Most of the comments were about the two of them, how “cute” they looked and such. Except for “Brainy”, who made rather specific and praising comments about James’s use of lighting and his various photography techniques. Lena was curious to know how the pictures had turned out, sure, but she didn’t want to call further attention to herself by requesting to take a look.

Then, a mild gasp rippled through the group in response to a particular photo. Lena felt her whole body tense up in response. 

“ _ What _ ? What?” Alex asked, rushing over to get a glimpse at the tablet. 

“Uh uh, not for the big sister to see,” Winn replied, somehow able to hold it above Alex’s reach despite her having at least a couple of inches on him. He darted away and slid the tablet over to Kara before Alex could grab it. 

“What are you guys freaking out about?” Kara asked as she took the tablet from Winn. “Oh,” she said, blushing slightly and then turning the screen towards Lena for her to see. 

“Ah,” Lena said, understanding the reaction from the group as she saw the shot captured when the two of them had kissed spontaneously in the river. She had to admit that the photo was...beautiful. The two of them looked so carefree and consumed by each other, like nothing around them even existed. Not even the freezing cold water that had made Lena gasp when she’d first entered it. The memory behind the photo made Lena’s stomach flutter. “I see.” 

“That’s enough,” Kara said, reaching behind her to hand James back his tablet. “Put it away, please.” 

The group whined in protest, but James obliged, tucking the device back in his bag carefully. Kara’s attention to the back of Lena’s neck had stopped, and now that anxiousness within her had returned, so had her urge to flee the scene. 

“Well, looks like the cooler needs refilled,” Alex said. “Lena? Mind giving me a hand?” 

“Uh…” Lena replied, surprised. “Sure, I guess,” she said, and pulled herself regrettably away from the warmth of the fire and Kara’s company, following Alex inside in a manner that felt very much like she was being escorted into a lion’s den.

“So,” Alex said once they were inside, taking a half empty case of beer and filling it with various cans from the selection of cases and six packs next to it offered like a cover charge upon each friend’s entry to the backyard. “There’s something I need to ask.” 

Lena felt her jaw clench. 

“Let me guess, this is the part where you give me the ‘protective older sister’ speech?” 

Alex let out a bark of a laugh. 

“God, no. I was gonna make sure you weren’t gonna get scared away by our friends. They can be...a lot.” 

“Oh,” Lena replied, surprised. “No, it’s...it’s okay. I’d take a group of rowdy millenials over a board room full of sexist old men any day.” 

Alex tilted her head, surprised and perhaps a bit impressed by Lena’s response.

“Fair enough. It just seems like Kara really likes you, so I wanted to make sure we don’t blow it for her.” 

“It’s fine, Alex, really,” Lena said, oddly touched by her simple gesture of concern. “So...you’re really not worried about some antisocial millionaire vying for your sister’s affections?” 

Alex shrugged. 

“I trust Kara’s judgement. And James and Kelly both think you’re just wonderful, so who am I to disagree? Plus that bike bought you at least a couple months of my favor.” 

“A couple months? How long do you think I’m gonna be around?” 

“Oh, Lena. Dear, sweet Lena,” Alex said, shaking her head and lifting the case of beer up onto the counter. “You think I haven’t already noticed that you are all but completely under my little sister’s spell?” She hopped up on the kitchen counter next to the drinks, cracking one of them open and taking a generous sip from it. “Kara may not date all that often, but when she does...she is the epitome of Girlfriend Material. It makes the rest of us look bad, to be honest.” 

“I…” Lena said, turning away to hide the blush on her cheeks and busying her hands by continuing to load fresh cans into the case. “I don’t know how to respond to that.” 

“I thought you wouldn’t,” Alex replied, and hopped off the counter, polishing off her drink with impressive speed and grabbing another before she headed towards the screen door back out to the patio. “Bring that out, would you?”

Lena supposed anyone with siblings had their own unique ways of testing the romantic interests of their siblings. Alex’s was apparently a mixture of kindness and demanding a small amount of physical labor. 

The night wore on in much the same fashion. Alex kept the fire hot by obsessively adding fresh wood to it and poking at it with a stick until she was satisfied. Kara and Lena were teased over what small tidbits of information the group had been given over their unique meeting. Lena, already knowing Lucy, James, and Kelly, felt just comfortable enough to become at ease with the unexpected company she found herself with, helped by the free flowing alcohol. In the back Lena’s mind was the insistence that she keep her wits about her so that she could eventually say her goodbyes and go home to the safe solitude of her apartment. But there was something magic that existed in bonfires, Lena discovered. The darker the sky got, and the colder the air became, the warmer the fire and the conversation became, despite all logic. So she stayed, she accepted each drink offered to her when her own had run out, and she savored the warmth and comfort that the fire and the company provided. 

But nothing lasts forever. And slowly each guest that had found their way to Alex and Kelly’s backyard said their goodbyes and made their way home, until once again it was just the Danver’s sisters, Kelly, and Lena. Kara, in her slightly inebriated state, had made herself more than comfortable next to Lena, her head resting in the crook of Lena’s neck and her arm grasping Lena’s waist beneath the fleece blanket draped over them with a slightly possessive grip. There was a muted, warbled thought at the back of Lena’s mind that told her she should head home, too. If only she hadn’t accepted just a few too many refills to safely do so. And if only pulling herself away from Kara now seemed like a crime. 

“Welp,” Kelly said, cutting through the quiet that had fallen over the two pairs of women in their shared drowsiness. “I think I’m gonna call it a night. Alex?” 

“Yeah,” Alex said through a large yawn. “Sounds good. See you guys in the morning.” 

“Wait, what?” Lena asked, needing a moment in her still slightly tipsy state to process what Alex had said. 

“I said see you in the morning. Your ass isn’t driving anywhere tonight, Luthor. See?” She said, and produced Lena’s keys from her pocket, jingling them for emphasis. 

Why did everyone keep taking her keys today? 

“How did you get those?” Lena asked.

Kara’s grip tightened around Lena’s waist, nuzzling closer to her like a silent apology. 

“You were having a good time!” she murmured drowsily, which shouldn’t have been as endearing as it was. “I didn’t want to shoo you away.” 

“But I...I don’t…” Lena struggled. 

“Lena, it’s really not a big deal,” Kelly insisted softly. “Kara crashes here all the time. We’re more than willing to extend the invitation to you.” 

Lena was stunned silent for a moment. Was this...what normal people did? Offer their houses up as a place to sleep after a night of drinking and revelry just because it was the safe and considerate thing to do? That didn’t seem right…

“I guess I could...uh…”

“Cool! It’s settled then, no need to keep discussing it. Night, Kara!” Alex said with a quick wave before tugging her wife towards the house. “Lena,” she said in a more sly tone as the two women disappeared through the sliding doors and into their home.

Lena and Kara sat in silence for a little while after that, Lena not sure what to say, as they watched the remaining embers of the fire in front of them slowly burn out, Kara still curled up next to her.

“You know I could just call an uber,” Lena finally said.

“Mm, you could, but then you wouldn’t get to try my famous blueberry chocolate chip pancakes I was planning on making for breakfast.  _ And _ ...you’d leave without getting my number.” 

“Sounds a little like extortion to me.” 

“Is not! It’s a  _ negotiation _ .” 

“Cat has trained you well.”

“Yup,” Kara said, pulling herself off of Lena and hopping up off the wicker couch. “So you coming in or not?” 

Lena felt regrettably colder with Kara no longer next to her. 

“I suppose I am,” Lena replied. “Though in jeans and with sand in my hair is not how I typically sleep.” 

“Well then it’s a good thing most homes are equipped with such things as showers and clothes to sleep in.” 

“You do realize this is not how most first dates usually end?” 

“Oh, this isn’t a date,” Kara said with a devilish smile. “When you’re on a date with me, you will know it.” 

Lena couldn’t help but feel a flutter in her chest in response. None of this was how dating was supposed to go. In Lena’s experience, you met someone, you pined over them in silent agony for awhile, you eventually got up the nerve to ask them out (or vice versa), you struggled through the bumbling inherent awkwardness of a first date, you convinced yourself you screwed up the date and that you were inherently unlovable until the person eventually texted you back (or didn’t), and you went from there. But then Lena met Kara, under the strangest of circumstances, and all of that flew out the window. Lena never found herself guessing at how Kara felt, or what she wanted, or if any of what she felt for Kara was reciprocated. Everything was just...out in the open from the first moment. And as delightful as that was, Lena almost missed the usual way of doing things, even if it was just to give herself more time to cushion her fall.

*

Kara had been sort of...going with the flow up until now. It seemed natural for Lena to be with her at the bonfire, just an extra, new friend to share in the evening. It was easy for her to curl up next to Lena as the night wore on, since they were sharing a blanket and they were both so much warmer close together than apart. And it was logical to expect Lena to spend the night, since Alex always offered her spare bedroom to anyone who she didn’t trust to drive home after a few drinks. There had been several times, even back when Alex lived in an apartment, that Kara had woken up in something like a dogpile of hungover friends on top of Alex’s pullout couch, a handful of blankets tossed over them for good measure. 

But now all those things created a natural sequence of events from when she and Lena had first showed up in Alex’s backyard to now had dried up, leaving Kara with an unexpected bout of nerves as she waited, sitting on the edge of the guest bed that she had crashed on so many nights before, for Lena to appear from the bathroom. 

She didn’t appear, though, not for a while, and Kara started to wonder if maybe she had been serious when she talked about calling an uber and perhaps snuck out before Kara had realized it. But then she heard footsteps softly creak their way down the hall from the bathroom, and a flutter of anxious glee shot through Kara’s stomach. 

“Lena!” Kara whispered. “In here!”

After a moment, the bedroom door slowly swung open, and Lena popped her head inside. 

“Oh. Hey,” Lena replied. 

“Hi.” 

“Where, um, where am I sleeping?” she asked, still standing in the doorway. 

“In here,” Kara said. 

“Oh,” Lena said, stepping gingerly into the room and shutting the door behind her. 

Kara still had a hard time wrapping her head around the fact that this was Lena  _ Luthor _ , millionaire and tech genius. It was especially hard to keep that in mind when she was wearing a pair of Kara’s flannel pj’s, with no makeup on and her hair wet and curled around her shoulders. She didn’t know if she would ever be able to see her the way everyone else apparently seemed to.

“Then where are  _ you _ sleeping?” Lena asked, seeming confused. 

“In here,” Kara replied simply, as if it were obvious. 

“Really? That seems…” 

Kara laughed at Lena’s scandalized response when she realized they would be sleeping in the same bed. 

“Don’t worry, Lena, I won’t make a move on you.” 

Lena quirked her eyebrows up at Kara suggestively. 

“You won’t?” she teased. 

“Well, no, not when you’re drunk.” Kara said with a laugh. 

“I’m not drunk!” Lena insisted, and then promptly tripped over her own feet as she walked further into the room. “Okay, maybe I am a little drunk.” 

Kara jumped up to help Lena to the bed before she fell. 

“I’m fine,” Lena said with a giggle. 

“Sure you are, it’s the floor’s fault.” 

Lena continued to giggle at Kara’s comment until she was curled up under the blankets, Kara sliding into the other side of the bed, careful to give Lena a respectable amount of space, as much as that was the last thing she wanted to do. 

Kara stared up at the ceiling for a moment, the both of them silent, and she wondered at how unexpectedly this little experiment of theirs had ended. 

“You know I tried to bail on this whole photoshoot thing,” Lena said softly, already half asleep. 

“Really?” Kara replied.

“Yeah. But it’s a good thing I didn’t. I’m really glad I met you.”

Kara was thankful for the darkness in the room, concealing the big dumb grin on her face. Lena rolled over, looking at Kara thoughtfully for a moment.

“Sure you don’t wanna make a move on me?” Lena asked.

Kara rolled her eyes, and leaned into Lena just long enough to plant a quick kiss on her cheek.

“Go to sleep, Lena.” 

“Ugh, fine,” Lena replied, and was fast asleep just a few moments later.

*

Lena was disoriented when she awoke the next morning. Disoriented in the “where the fuck am I and how the  _ fuck _ did I get here?” kind of way. And then she heard a snore next to her, which was more like a snort. It was loud and obnoxious and still somehow cute at the same time. Lena rolled over to see a face that brought the memories from the previous day back.

Photoshoot. Kara. Meeting Kara. Touching Kara.  _ Kissing _ Kara. Falling asleep  _ next _ to Kara and now waking up  _ still _ next to her...in Kara’s sister’s guest bedroom. 

That last part wasn’t ideal. And the more she thought about it the more Lena wondered just how in the hell she had wound up here. Sure, Kara was attractive, and easy to talk to, and fun to be around. And yeah, the handful of times they had kissed had been mind numbing and heart racing and made Lena realize just how touch starved she had been...

But Lena was nothing if not self aware. Which meant that she was shocked by her own behaviour. The Lena she thought she knew would have taken off at the first suggestion of ‘hanging out’ with a girl’s friends and family after having just met her. She should have fled the scene and spent the next few days talking herself out of her attraction altogether, eventually resolving never to see her again. Was that healthy? Absolutely not. But it was  _ safe _ . 

So what in the actual fuck was she doing sleeping next to Kara in a stranger’s house, in borrowed flannel pajamas, no less?

The more Lena thought about it, the more freaked out she was by the whole situation. She had to get out of there, and fast. She didn’t know if Kara would understand, or even forgive her if she took off now without a goodbye or without even getting Kara’s phone number. But this was just too much. Lena was dangerously close to getting real, fuzzy, fluffy feeling for Kara. And Kara so far seemed more than keen to continue this lightning round straight into something serious. And serious meant Lena trusting someone, and being vulnerable again…

And potentially getting her heart broken. 

So. Yeah. It was fun while it lasted. But Lena had to  _ go _ . 

She did a quick check of her surroundings. Where was her phone? She felt around in the near dark, the drawn curtains blocking out most of the light from the first hints of sunrise outside, until she found it on the nightstand next to her. It was almost dead. With three missed calls from Sam.

Shit. 

The phone lit up with yet another call from her very persistent project manager. As carefully as she could, not wanting to wake up Kara in the middle of her attempted escape, Lena slid out of the bed and started looking for her clothes as she answered the phone. 

“What, Sam? What is it?” Lena whispered harshly into the receiver, glancing over to make sure Kara was still asleep. 

_ “Uh uh. You don’t get to forget about our meeting and then give me attitude about it.”  _

“Meeting? Who the hell schedules a meeting on a Sunday morning?” 

_ “You do. Why are you whispering?” _

“I, uh…” Lena struggled, as she finally found her clothes bunched up in a chair in the corner of the room. “I don’t want to wake up...don’t worry about it.” 

_ “Oh my god, _ ” Sam said, her tone full of devilish amusement. “ _ Did you hook up with someone last night?”  _

“No!” Lena hissed. “Look, give me an hour and I’ll meet you at the office.” 

_ “Sure. No worries, it’s not like I have a life or anything. Oh, and Lena?”  _

“What?” 

_ “Is she hot?” _

Lena hung up in lieu of an answer. Somehow in all the chaos of her weekend, she had completely forgotten that she asked Sam to meet up with her to go over their proposal she was set to present to the board on Monday. Because, you know, despite the fact that she was the  _ president of the company _ , she still had to beg for permission any time she came up with an idea to make them more money. Because that made sense. 

She tossed her borrowed pajamas aside, pulling on her clothes from the day before. Kara continued to intermittently snort, still fast asleep. As quietly as she could, Lena opened the bedroom door and slipped out, hoping that Kara wouldn’t be too disappointed to see her gone when she woke up.

The stairs creaked annoyingly as Lena crept down them, holding her shoes in her hand to avoid making any extra noise wearing them would create. Once at the bottom of the steps, she walked quickly through the dining room and towards the back door, and only then remembered that Alex had taken her keys the previous night. 

“Shit,” Lena muttered to herself, looking around to see if she could find a key hook or something on the walls where it might have ended up.

“Looking for something?” a voice said, and Lena froze. She turned, slowly, to see Kelly sitting at the kitchen counter with her laptop open, a cup of coffee steaming next to her. 

“My keys?” Lena asked, hoping Kelly wouldn’t give her too much grief about the current situation. 

Kelly reached over to a bowl on the other side of the counter, plucked Lena’s keys out of it, and slid them over to Lena. Lena took them reluctantly. 

“Didn’t think you were a one night stand kind of woman,” Kelly said, taking a sip from her coffee mug, her expression unreadable as she refocused her attention on her laptop screen.

“Oh, I didn’t...we didn’t…” Lena stammered. “You know what I mean.”

“Thank god for that,” Kelly replied. “Thin walls, you know?” 

“Right,” Lena said, letting out an uncomfortable chuckle. “Well, I have to go. When Kara wakes up, tell her that-” Lena paused, unable to think of anything that would suffice. She sighed. “You know what? Don’t tell her anything. It’s better that way.” 

“I’m confused,” Kelly said, pushing her laptop aside. “I thought you two were hitting it off?” 

“We were,” Lena said, slipping on her shoes and heading towards the door. “That’s the problem.” 

*

“You asshole!” Sam said, bonking Lena on the head with her own blueprints. “You had a lovely time with what sounds like a very sweet girl who actually  _ liked _ you,” she bonked her again. “And you just bailed on her like that?” 

“Stop that!” Lena said, snatching the blueprint out of Sam’s hands before she could hit her again. “You don’t understand.” 

“You’re right, I don’t.” 

“Can we focus on the presentation, please?” 

“Not until you tell me what the hell is wrong with you,” Sam insisted, ripping a piece of her doughnut off and throwing it at Lena since her weapon of choice had been taken from her.

“I am not ready for a relationship right now!” Lena insisted as she pulled the piece of doughnut out of her hair and threw it back at Sam. “I had a lapse in judgement, and I corrected it before things went too far.” 

“For God’s sake, Lena,” Sam said, shaking her head. “Andrea really fucked you up, didn’t she?” 

“Oh, don’t bring her into this. She has nothing to do with it. Kara just...isn’t my type.” 

“Not your type?” Sam replied exasperatedly, holding her phone out to Lena to show her a picture of Kara from her Instagram. “That girl is not your type?  _ That _ girl? Look at her! She is  _ everyone’s _ type!” 

“How the hell did you find her profile already?” 

“Social media is a magical thing. You should try it sometime,” Sam said with a roll of her eyes, fully aware of Lena’s refusal to make herself accessible, even online. “Listen, Lena. Part of my job is to know when I have to save you from yourself. So take my advice, and do whatever it takes to see that girl again. You hear me?” 

Lena sighed, chewing on the end of her pen, staring at the picture of Kara still displayed on Sam’s phone. It was a candid shot James must have taken the day before, of Kara sitting at the top of the parking garage, overlooking the view of the city behind her, the afternoon sun shining on her soft features and radiant blonde hair. Lena remembered how nervous that view had made her, how daunting the height had been. And she remembered how Kara was the only thing that brought her any sense of calm when she had tried to stand near the ledge. Despite the stiffness of their initial meeting, Lena was truly surprised by how at ease she had felt around Kara. Like they had known each other forever, despite not knowing each other at all. No one had ever shown Lena such immediate and unwavering kindness and understanding. And Lena had repaid Kara’s kindness by taking off on her without warning. 

_ Ah, hell,  _ Lena thought bitterly, knowing that Sam was right. 

“I hear you,” Lena said with a sigh.

“Good,” Sam said, throwing another piece of doughnut at her. 

“Hey! I admitted I was wrong, stop throwing things at me!” 

“No. It’s fun,” Sam said with a chuckle. 

*

Kara slumped against the back of the elevator, Cat’s usual order of coffee, extra hot, nearly burning her fingers as she held it and waited for the elevator doors to shut and drag her up to another day of the same old same old. Her usual case of the Monday blues was a bit exaggerated today, Kara still a bit let down by the anticlimactic ending of what had started off as a rather promising weekend. 

Anticlimactic seemed like the only appropriate word to describe becoming quickly infatuated with a woman who turned out to be one of the most powerful women in National City, spending the whole day and night with her, sleeping in the same bed with her, and her disappearing in the morning without any sort of explanation of promise to see Kara again. 

Did Kara do something wrong? Did she come on too strong? Maybe there were different rules to dating millionaires that Kara was unaware of. Rules that did not involve bonfires and light teasing from all her friends. But she had thought that Lena was having a good time! But maybe she was n’t. Maybe Lena hated the whole thing and was just too polite to say anything.

_ I’m glad I met you _ , Kara remembered Lena saying before she drifted off to sleep. 

So then why did she bail? 

The elevator dinged, the doors opened, and Kara let out one last long sigh before forcing her face into a tight smile to greet her boss. Cat was a bear on Monday mornings, and if she picked up on Kara’s bad mood, she would tear into her just for the sport of it. 

Before she got to Cat’s office, however, she was intercepted by Winn, who seemed to pop up out of nowhere with a mixture of panic and glee on his face. 

“Kara! Hey!” he said, out of breath. “So, listen. Don’t freak out.”

“Ugh, what is it? Is Cat on a rampage already? It’s not even 8 am.” 

“It’s not that. It’s uh...well...you’ll just have to see for yourself.” 

Winn plucked Cat’s coffee out of Kara’s hand, like he was expecting a reaction from Kara that might compromise her grip on it.

“Winn, why are you being so weird? What is it that-”

Kara stopped dead in her tracks when she rounded the corner and saw what he must have been trying to warn her about. Normally, she would have seen her desk, which was typically pretty clean and tidy except for the post-it notes with dates and reminders stuck all over it. Instead, she saw the general shape of what should have been her desk, hidden under an absolutely insane amount of flowers.

“Wha-” Kara began to say, but couldn’t form any sort of coherent words beyond that. She approached her desk slowly, and it was not lost on her that just about every pair of eyes in the office was on her as she did so. Kara cleared her throat, nervous excitement growing in her chest with the same pressure as an unexpected coughing fit in a quiet room. In the middle of the display of what had to be at least twenty dozen bouquets of flowers crowded onto the desk, her chair, and the floor around it, there was a small arrangement of blue violets. This wouldn’t have stuck out to Kara in any meaningful way if she didn’t specifically remember pointing them out to Lena when they were in the woods, telling her they were her favorite wildflower. A small card protruded from the middle of the arrangement of violets.

The card was a common enough piece of thick stationary paper with “LCorp” printed at the top, and in uncommonly pretty handwriting, the card read: 

_ Sorry I missed out on pancakes...and your number. Let me make it up to you over dinner? Tonight? _

_ L.L. _

Below the signature, Lena had scribbled out an address and a time. Kara let a small giggle escape her lips despite all the prying eyes of her coworkers. 

“Are they from Lena?” Winn whispered, poking his head over her shoulder to try and get a glimpse of the note. 

“Stop,” Kara insisted, yanking the note away from his prying eyes. “I hope Ms. Grant won’t be too mad about-”

“ _ Keira _ !” Cat’s voice boomed behind them. Kara and Winn both froze, and then turned reluctantly to see Ms. Grant shooting daggers at them with her eyes. 

“Good morning, Ms. Grant!,” Kara said as cheerfully as she could, standing in front of her desk as if her slender figure could manage to conceal the small flower shop Lena had all but set up for her. 

“If I so much as get a tickle in my nose from all the pollen you have  _ unleashed _ on my office, I will personally see to it that you never find work in this city again.” 

“Right, sorry,” Kara said, rushing to gather up as many of the bouquets as she could, followed by Winn, who hastily handed Cat her coffee and followed suit to help Kara gather up all the flowers. 

*

Lena was keeping her hands as busy as she could to keep her nerves at bay. She cleaned her already spotless apartment. She changed outfits three times. She organized and reorganized the magazines on her coffee table: first in alphabetical order, then in order of which would make her look the most well read, and then again because she didn’t want to seem pretentious by having a science magazine featuring her own company’s work on the top. She settled on putting an issue of Catco on the top, hoping Kara would notice that she took an interest in her job. She had chopped the vegetables on her cutting board so finely, over and over again, that she might as well have tossed them in the blender. Anything to keep her from obsessing over the clock or listening for a knock at the door.

When the knock at the door finally came Lena all but jumped out of her own skin. God, why was she so  _ nervous _ ? It’s not like she had met a really cute girl, hit it off with her almost instantly, took off on her like an  _ asshole _ , and was now desperate to convince her she wasn’t a complete spaz…

Lena fixed her hair and wiped her sweaty palms on her pants before moving to open the door. She didn’t typically wear her hair down so naturally like this. But Kara had commented once or twice about how much she liked her curls, so she had gone against her instincts and left the flat iron alone. The little voice in her head that had gotten her into this mess in the first place suggested that she not open the door at all, before she inwardly told it to hush up before it could get the best of her.

Kara seemed almost surprised when Lena opened the door. She was wearing black skinny jeans, a long, tan jacket, and a ruffled shirt that would have been a crime against fashion if it was being worn by anyone else. Her hair was pinned up, and Lena had the fleeting urge to tug that pin loose and run her fingers through her hair. Instead, she clasped her hands together in front of her waist. 

“Oh, good,” Kara said, relieved. “I got the right place. I’ve never been in this part of the city before. I’ve never seen an apartment building with a door man before, either.” 

“We actually don’t have a doorman. One of the tenants just likes to dress up in a doorman’s outfit and tell people to go away.” 

Kara’s eyes went wide. 

“I’m kidding, Kara,” Lena clarified.

_ God, Lena, don’t make jokes,  _ she thought.  _ You’re no good at them. _

But to her surprise, Kara laughed, and it seemed to be enough to break past the initial stiffness and anxiety of their reunion. 

“Come in, please,” Lena said, and held the door open for Kara to walk through.

“I, uh, I would have brought flowers,” Kara said as she took off her coat and Lena took it from her. “But I’m pretty sure you bought out every florist in town.” 

“Well it worked, didn’t it?” Lena asked teasingly as she hung up Kara’s coat, and then remembered that she should probably be a bit more apologetic after her dickish behaviour. “Look, Kara, about the other day…”

“If you’re going to apologize, don’t,” Kara insisted. 

Lena blinked, surprised. 

“But I had a whole speech planned. It was at least a minute and a half’s worth of me rambling about how stupid I am and how pretty you are…” 

Kara’s lips rolled together, trying and failing to contain a flustered smile. And once Lena saw that smile, she could only think one thing: what the hell was I thinking yesterday when I ran off? 

“I came on too strong,” Kara said. “Pushing you to meet my sister and all my friends like that was too much.” 

“That wasn’t it at all. I had a lovely time, actually,” Lena replied. “I’m just not used to things going so smoothly with a woman I’m interested in. I kind of got in my own head about it. Which wasn’t fair to you, because you didn’t do anything wrong. You kind of did everything right, if I’m being honest.” 

“Really?” Kara asked. “Are you sure? That doesn’t sound like me.” 

Lena laughed, relieved that they seemed to be getting back on the right track with one another after her little blunder. 

“So...where are we headed?” Kara asked after a quiet pause fell over them, during which time the two women seemed to just stare at one another, admiring. “I could eat literally anything. I’m not picky. Well, not exceptionally picky, at least.” 

“Actually,” Lena said, suddenly self conscious. “I thought I would cook something for dinner. I don’t go out all that much.” 

“You really are a recluse, aren’t you?” Kara asked. 

“I’m afraid so,” Lena said, and was rewarded with a beaming smile. 

“Even better, then!” Kara said. “I get you all to myself for the first time since we’ve met.” 

“Oh, you mean you weren’t planning on inviting at least half a dozen people to join us for dinner?” 

“Okay, okay,” Kara said with a laugh. “I get it! I have a very tight knit group of friends.” 

“Which I am perfectly fine with,” Lena said, taking a step towards Kara. “So long as I don’t have to compete for your attention.” 

“Lena,” Kara replied softly, eyes tracing down Lena’s frame and then back up. “I don’t think that is ever going to be a problem.” 

If it was up to Lena, she would have kissed Kara right then and there. But she didn’t think that was her choice to make, not after what she did. So she settled on giving Kara a look. A look she hoped successfully conveyed just how overwhelming it was to be this close to her again. And it was. The longer they stood like this, inches apart, Kara’s unrelenting gaze flicking from Lena’s eyes to her lips, the harder it was for Lena to breathe. The silence between them filled the apartment with a sort of static that felt loud, almost deafeningly so. Lena couldn’t even think of anything snarky to say to break up the tension, she just let herself fall, drowning in a heady lust that was far too strong considering that Kara wasn’t even touching her. But then, all of a sudden, that changed, and Kara was on her, lips soft, hands possessive, breath ragged.

Lena really had planned on properly wining and dining Kara Danvers before trying to make a move on her. She wanted to get to know her, to have something that felt like a normal date, even if it was in the confines of her apartment. But she also didn’t complain when, within a moment, Lena found herself backed against her kitchen island, the scent of Kara’s perfume enveloping her as Kara kissed her with all the pent up intensity they had managed to keep at bay until that moment. Lena quickly became overwhelmed with need, with Kara’s mouth hot against hers, her fingers tangling into Lena’s hair. Lena’s back pressed firmly into the marble countertop as their hips connected with just enough pressure to make her groan with an unhinged desire she hadn’t felt for another woman in what felt like an eternity. 

Lena truly hadn’t invited Kara over here just to fuck her. But when Kara pulled away from Lena, pupils blown and lips red from Lena’s lipstick long enough to ask her where the bedroom was, Lena was more than happy to postpone dinner until  _ after _ .

*

“For the record,” Kara said breathlessly, straddling Lena’s lap, her shirt and jeans tossed aside and her hair freed from the pin that had kept it tied neatly on top of her head. “I don’t usually do this with someone I know so little about.” 

“So what do you want to know?” Lena replied, pulling Kara’s hair to one side so she could focus her attention on Kara’s neck. 

Kara’s head tilted back, sighing appreciatively as Lena’s mouth trailed down her neck and to the swell of her breasts. “Uh,” she said. “Just the basics for now, I guess?” 

“Okay,” Lena replied, flipping their positions so that Kara was now lying against the bed and Lena was hovering over her. “I am one the President of the National City branch of LuthorCorp,” she said as she pulled her own shirt off. “I have one brother and a stepmother, both of whom I have shit relationships with.”

Lena’s hands found their way to Kara’s underwear, making quick work of pulling them off. 

“I have two PhD’s,” she continued. “I’m allergic to pistachios. I love old films. I had a bit of a drawn out goth phase as a teenager,” Kara tried to hold back a giggle as she tried to picture that. “And I have commitment issues because I caught my ex-fiance cheating on me a year ago. You?” 

Every detail of her own life fell promptly out of Kara’s brain when Lena teased her with a stroke of her fingers through her folds. But Lena didn’t continue any further. Instead she stared at Kara intently, waiting for her to speak.

“Uh, I work for Cat Grant,” Kara struggled. “Who was angrily sneezing in my direction all afternoon because of all those flowers you sent.”

Lena laughed, her hair tickling Kara as she rested her forehead against her stomach until she composed herself.

“Sorry,” Lena said.

“She’ll get over it,” Kara said, pulling Lena close so she could kiss her, unable to hold back any longer. Lena indulged her a moment by lowering herself down to press the weight of her body against Kara’s, and then pulled away again. 

“Continue,” Lena said. “You were saying?” 

Kara let out a flustered laugh. “Fine. I’m adopted. I have one sister, who you obviously met. Just the one bachelor's degree. I was a huge theater nerd all the way through college, and I will probably make you watch a ton of musicals.” 

“Oh  _ no _ ,” Lena groaned in mock horror, sitting up slightly. 

“Oh, come on!” Kara protested, pulling Lena back in and kissing her again. “I will make it worth your while,” she murmured. 

Lena let out a shuddering sigh. 

“Fine,” she replied. “Anything else I should know?” 

God she was relentless, wasn’t she?

“Uh...I don’t think so. No known allergies, ex-fiances, or commitment issues that I know of.”

“Safe to say we’re not strangers anymore, then?” 

“I’d say so.” 

“Good,” Lena said, and took a moment to carefully remove Kara’s glasses and set them on the nightstand next to them before she brought her lips to hover next to Kara’s ear. “Can I fuck you now?” 

Kara gulped. 

“Yes, please,” she said. 

Lena still insisted on teasing Kara a bit longer, her lips exploring every part of her body it encountered until she finally lowered her mouth to Kara’s center, and Kara tried not to give away just how desperate she was for Lena by biting her lip to get past the moan that tried to slip out.

“Don’t you dare hold back,” Lena purred, dragging her tongue torturously slowly over Kara’s clit.

Kara moaned again, as loudly as she pleased, and Lena’s eyes fluttered shut as she listened to it, like it was her favorite sound in the world. 

Kara made a mental note to send a few of those bouquets of flowers to James as a thank you, before Lena dipped her tongue against Kara again and the only thought left in her head was  _ more _ .

*

A few weeks later, Kara was sprawled out on the couch in Lena’s office, waiting for her girlfriend to get out of a meeting so she could take her to lunch, when her phone buzzed in her pocket. Kara didn’t know what she was expecting. Something common, like her sister asking if she and Lena wanted to come by for dinner or Cat wondering why she had disappeared, forgetting, like she often did, that sometimes her assistant chose not to work through her lunch hour. Instead, it was a notification from Twitter. No, make that three. And then five. And then ten. Which was definitely odd, because Kara only had a twitter to keep an eye on her boss’s drunk tweeting, and never really used it. 

When she saw what all the notifications were in reference to, she gulped. 

“Sorry, darling, I got out of there as soon as I could,” she heard Lena say as she came into her office. “Ready to go?” 

“Uh…” Kara said, “Sure. But first there’s probably something you should see.” 

Kara handed her Lena her phone. Despite the lowkey panic she was feeling, she couldn’t help but remember how much Alex had griped about this new found habit of Kara’s, handing Lena her phone whenever she wanted her to see something. Alex had said something along the lines of “I’m your sister and even I can’t touch your phone. How come she gets to?” and Kara had replied by saying “Anything on my phone I think is too inappropriate for my sister to stumble upon is something that Lena definitely sent me herself.”

Alex wasn’t all that amused with that response. 

Now, Kara watched Lena’s expression carefully as she scrolled through her Twitter and came to the same realization that Kara had.

James had recently submitted a small collection of the photos from their shoot to a local photography magazine. Kara and Lena had both given their okay when he first asked about it, not all that worried about the attention it would gain. 

But they had severely underestimated the reaction it would get. Within a few hours of the magazine posting an article online featuring the photos of the two women and their unique meeting, it had completely blown up. It had already been picked up and reposted by several larger publications.

Kara expected Lena to be annoyed, considering her hatred of public attention, or maybe even mad. Instead, she just shrugged. 

“So what? It’s not like anyone realizes that it’s me, right?” 

“Right,” Kara said, sighing in relief. “Right. No big deal.”

“People clearly have already figured out it’s you, though, based on all the tweets mentioning you. Are you okay with this?” 

Kara bit her lower lip, thinking. Personal assistant was not a job that had ever put her in the spotlight before. She honestly didn’t know what to do with the sudden attention. 

“I am. I think…” Kara said carefully. 

“Want me to give you some pointers on how to avoid the public eye?” Lena asked.

“For some clickbait articles? Nah. It should blow over soon.” 

Kara’s phone started buzzing in Lena’s hand, and she almost dropped it in shock, handing it back to Kara as carefully as if it were a live grenade. 

Her boss was calling. Because of course she was. Kara really wanted to let it go to voicemail, because she was assuming that Cat was trying to find some reason to get her to come back to the office early, and she was really, really looking forward to her lunch date with her girlfriend. But the last time she had ignored a call from Ms. Grant...it had not ended well. 

“Yeah?” Kara said, and then instantly regretted the shortness in her tone, not thinking before she spoke with her mind distracted by everything else. 

_ “Keira, I’d like to think that after working together for 8 months-” _

“Two years,” Kara corrected. 

Cat paused. Kara could literally picture her annoyed expression from being interrupted. 

_ “That we had come to a certain understanding with each other. That we could be open and honest with one another.”  _

“What do you-”

_ “So why have you neglected to inform me that you are so familiarly acquainted with the most elusive somebody in National City. My white whale, as it were.”  _

“I don’t-” 

_ “I’m talking about Lena Luthor. And your little...romp that is all over the internet.”  _

Kara’s eyes went wide, shooting up at Lena, who looked equal parts confused and worried, unable to hear the conversation but only able to guess that it was nothing good based on Kara’s expressions.

“Miss Grant,” Kara said with a forced laugh, mildly panicking. “I think I would know if I had met Lena Luthor.” 

Lena’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head, mouthing  _ “What the fuck?”  _ at Kara. 

_ “Kara,”  _ Cat replied, unimpressed. Kara tapped the speakerphone button on her phone and held it out so that Lena could listen in.  _ “Even if you weren’t a  _ terrible _ liar, I would know you're lying because it is my job to know what everyone in this city is up to. And I mean everyone.” _

“Did you just get my name right?” 

_ “And while Miss Luthor,”  _ Cat continued, undeterred,  _ “may think she has successfully managed to elude the press up until this point, she has not eluded me. She just never managed to be interesting enough to have anything gossip worthy to run. But this is interesting. So…” _ Cat said, and then went silent. 

“So?” Kara asked helplessly. 

“Hang up!” Lena mouthed. 

“I  _ can’t _ !” Kara silently replied.

_ “So are you two an item or not? Is she the reason you keep neglecting your work in the middle of the day?”  _

“I-” Kara said, but was at a loss for words.

_ “Hmm,”  _ Cat replied. _ “Well. Enjoy your lunch, Keira. We have a lot to talk about when you get back. Oh, and one more thing?”  _

Existential dread did not begin to cover Kara’s current emotional state in response to this phone call.

“Yes, Miss Grant?”

_ “That photographer friend of yours, James Olsen. Tell him to give me a call. I may have use for him here.”  _

“I, uh...okay. I will.” 

The line went dead, Cat having hung up, and Kara could only stare helplessly at Lena. 

“Well,” Lena said slowly. “If Cat figured it out...it’s only a matter of time before everyone else does.” 

“I’m so sorry, Lena, if I had known that she would figure out that-”

“Kara, Kara,” Lena said soothingly, holding both her hands out for Kara to take and pulling her onto her feet from the couch. “It’s okay.” 

“Really?” 

“Really,” she said, taking a moment to press their foreheads together. It was something they did a lot, a silent way of conveying ‘I hear you, I’m here for you, I’m not going anywhere’. “I mean,” she continued, “if the only thing Cat has on me is that I fell in love with a girl I met at a photoshoot, well...that’s not all that terrible, is it?” 

Kara blinked, almost distracted enough from her lingering panic from Cat’s call and from the ever familiar and ever intoxicating scent of Lena’s perfume to miss what Lena had actually said. 

“Fell in love with, huh?” 

Lena chuckled softly. 

“Uh oh. Busted.”

“Yeah you are,” Kara said, leaning in to kiss her, something that was all but second nature to her now but still thrilling each and every time, especially now. “I fell in love with you, too, by the way.”

“Oh thank  _ God _ , you almost triggered my abandonment issues.” 

Kara laughed, kissing her once more for good measure. 

“Now can we please get something to eat?” she said. “I am  _ starving _ .” 

“Of course. Oh! Let’s try that new sushi place on 5th. I’m sure Cat won’t mind you being a little late, under the circumstances, right?” 

“You mean that rooftop restaurant? Isn’t that gonna freak you out?” 

Lena smiled. 

“What can I say? I’m not as afraid of falling as I used to be.”

  
  


The End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere in my head there was an alternate ending where James got commissioned to do their engagement shoot...didn't get to it, but just know it happens :)
> 
> Thanks for going on this little journey with me. I appreciate the shit out of all of you for reading, and I wanna smoosh the faces of everyone who left such lovely feedback on part one. You tha best.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the story! Let me know what you thought in the comments, if you're so inclined <3 (tho don't come at me with karlena top/bottom discourse, IT WAS BARELY HALF A PAGE OF SMUT IT'S NOT WORTH IT lolllll )
> 
> Love yinz,  
> Tess


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